The Dictionary of Lost Words - English
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Vocal Characteristics
Language
EnglishVoice Age
Young Adult (18-35)Accents
North American (US Midwest- Chicago, Great Lakes)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
The dictionary of lost words by Pip Williams May 18 87 scriptorium. It sounds as if it might have been a grand building where the lightest footstep would echo between marble floor and gilded dome. But it was just a shed in the back garden of a house in Oxford. Instead of storing shovels and rakes, the shed stored words. Every word in the English language was written on a slip of paper. The size of a postcard volunteers posted them from all over the world and they were kept in bundles in the hundreds of pigeon holes that lined the shed walls. Doctor Murray was the one who named it the scriptorium. He must have thought it an indignity for the English language to be stored in a garden shed. But everyone who worked there called it rippy. Everyone but me, I liked the feel of scriptorium as it moved around my mouth and landed softly between my lips. It took me a long time to learn to say it. And when I finally did, nothing else would do. Dad once helped me search the pigeon holes for scriptorium, we found five slips with examples of how the word had been used. Each quotation dating back little more than 100 years. All of them were more or less the same and none of them referred to a shed in the back garden of a house in Oxford, a scriptorium. The slips told me was a writing room and a monastery. But I understood why Dr Murray had chosen it. He and his assistants were a little like monks. And when I was five, it was easy to imagine the dictionary as their holy book. When Dr Murray told me it would take a lifetime to compile all the words. I wondered whose his hair was already as gray as ash. And they were only halfway through b dad and Dr Murray had been teachers together in Scotland long before there was scriptorium and because they were friends and because I had no mother to take care of for me and because dad was one of Dr Murray's most trusted lexicographers, everyone turned a blind eye. When I was in the scriptorium, the scriptorium felt magical like everything that ever was and ever could be had been stored within its walls. Books were piled on every surface. Old dictionaries, histories and tales from long ago filled the shelves that separated one desk from another or created a nook for a chair, pigeon holes rose from the floor to the ceiling. They were crammed full of slips. And dad once said that if I read every one I'd understand the meaning of everything in the middle of it all was the sorting table de said at one end and three assistants could fiddle on either side. At the other end was Dr Murray's high desk facing all the words and all the men who helped him define them. We always arrived before the other lexicographers. And for that little while I would have dad and the words all to myself, I'd sit on dad's lap at the sorting table and help him sort the slips. Whenever we came across a word, I didn't know he would read the quotation it came with and help me to work out what it meant. If I asked the right questions, he would try to find the book. The quotation came from and read me more. It was like a treasure hunt and sometimes I found gold.