OED
A co-worker mentioned to J. that they imagine our family dinner conversations to be very philosophical. I'm glad J. wasn't in the process of drinking a cup of coffee, because if it had been me, I would have spewed it all over whoever was standing in front of me. Truly, I hate to disappoint anyone, but we don't have particularly philosophical dinner conversations. More often than not, the bulk of conversation involves listening to the teens in the house engage in recreational bickering. If that is not the current conversation, then I'm embarrassed to say that dinner conversation veers towards popular parasites far more often than seems normal. Occasionally we will have actual conversations, but TM claims that that only happens when B. is home. M. is far more likely to aid in the popular parasite discussion than not.
But sometimes, there is a lull in the bickering parasite topic du jour and we have to actually make use of this:
That would be the dictionary stand which lives in our dining room. The stand was my grandmother's. The open dictionary was J.'s grandparent's. The large dictionary lying down on the left was my great-grandfather's. And the case with the books is the complete Oxford English Dictionary (OED) which also came from J.'s grandparents. J. grew up with a dictionary in the dining room, and we continue the tradition. This is what happens when two people marry whose respective grandmothers earned Master's degrees in various combinations of Classics and English. J.'s grandmother's degree was from University of Illinois, and mine received hers from Columbia University. Not a common thing for women at the time.
There was some discussion last night over the origin of a word and exactly how old that word was. The claim for newness was quickly overruled by an entry in the OED, which J. found by a combination of squinting and magnifying glass use.
Yes, that's four regularly printed pages reduced to one. There is a reason its case has a drawer for a magnifying glass.
OED - 1
"The Internet" - 0
But sometimes, there is a lull in the bickering parasite topic du jour and we have to actually make use of this:
That would be the dictionary stand which lives in our dining room. The stand was my grandmother's. The open dictionary was J.'s grandparent's. The large dictionary lying down on the left was my great-grandfather's. And the case with the books is the complete Oxford English Dictionary (OED) which also came from J.'s grandparents. J. grew up with a dictionary in the dining room, and we continue the tradition. This is what happens when two people marry whose respective grandmothers earned Master's degrees in various combinations of Classics and English. J.'s grandmother's degree was from University of Illinois, and mine received hers from Columbia University. Not a common thing for women at the time.
There was some discussion last night over the origin of a word and exactly how old that word was. The claim for newness was quickly overruled by an entry in the OED, which J. found by a combination of squinting and magnifying glass use.
Yes, that's four regularly printed pages reduced to one. There is a reason its case has a drawer for a magnifying glass.
OED - 1
"The Internet" - 0
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