$10, $100 and $1000 Words

I wrote about $10 words a few weeks ago. Those are words that you read but don't know the meaning. So you go to the dictionary and look them up. I've been doing that for 35 years and writing them on 4"x6" index cards that I put in a card file. I still have that file and it's still growing as I read more. Here's an example: "supercilious" meaning "assuming an air of contemptuous indifference or superiority" according to my Concise Oxford Dictionary. I ran across that word again reading Erasmus' "Praise of Folly" yesterday - the goddess, "Folly", was describing theologians circa 1500 - hehehe ;-).

So why $10? That's an American idiom to describe a "big" word. But since one can buy a good dictionary for about $10, give or take a few bucks, the value seems right. ["order of magnitude" as the scientists say hehehe ;-) ].

Now sometimes you can't find the word in a normal "abridged" dictionary. Then you need an unabridged dictionary. I got tired of going online so bought a new one last week - my old one was 40 years old. Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary from Barnes & Noble online cost about $50 plus tax and shipping - close enough to my $100 label. Pretty cheap for such a huge book with so much knowledge, don't you think?

Here's an example of a $100 word: "latifundium" which means (1) "a great estate" or (2) "a great landed estate, especially of the ancient Romans". I ran across that word many times in reading histories of central European nations in the Middle Ages. Here's a sentence from the "Thirty Years' War" by Geoffrey Parker. "The Counter-Reformation state was still conceived rather like a gigantic monastic latifundium." Interesting, eh?

Now the big one. What's a $1000 word? That's a word which definition you can only find in the unabridged Oxford English Dictionary. I bought one last week, too. It was on sale for ... $1000 on Barnes & Noble online. Being "rich" I figured, why not? Spending money on intellectual endeavors is a good use of money. :-) So it came a few days ago in five large, heavy boxes with all 20 large volumes. And mirabile dictu, I needed it last yesterday afternoon! Again reading Erasmus, I came across "ecceities", plural of "ecceity". That word wasn't in my regular or unabridged dictionaries. The "OED" had it! "Ecceity" means "the quality of being present" - a surprisingly useful word! It derives from "ecce" which is Latin for "Behold". "Ecce" is prounounced, "eksi", in English. According to the Bible in John xix 5, Pontius Pilate said "Ecce Homo!" [Behold the man!] when seeing Christ at some point.

The OED even cited writings on Erasmus for the usage examples. What a great set of books! Here's the sentence I found in Erasmus, as Folly is describing things philosophers can see: "Though ignorant even of themselves and sometimes not able to see the ditch or stone in their path ... they still boast that they can see ideas, universals, ... quiddities, ecceities, things which are all so insubstantial that I [Folly, the goddess] doubt if even Lynceus could perceive them." [uh, Lynceus was a Greek Argonaut whose eyesight was so keen he could see great distances, even through the Earth, according to answers.com.]

Gosh, no doubt "ecceity" is certainly a $1000 word !!! ;-) I'm ecstatic about ecceity !!! ;-)