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The Index Notch - Issue #1

  • joe3-butterlamb
  • Apr 23
  • 7 min read

Contents:


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I. What’s the Good Word?


Don't Stop Believing ... that the Word Journey Is Overused


A real journey.
A real journey.

When I hear the word journey, I think of the line "the point of a journey is not to arrive" from "Prime Mover," one of my favorite Rush songs. As luck would have it, I've been thinking about that line a lot these days because, unless you've been away from people for a very long time, you've undoubtedly noticed that the word journey has been getting a lot of play lately.


I've been wondering why. Why everyone seems to be on some sort of journey now and why things that would never have been associated with journeys in the past (i.e., hair (re)growth, car buying, education, etc.) are now covered by that label. So, you can imagine my delight when I came across this article from the New York Times that addresses this lexicographical shift head on.


According to the article, this change in the meaning of journey is an example of "semantic drift" and it is the result of a range of cultural trends, including the romanticizing of everyday life, the separation of journey and travel thanks to a modern world that allows us to "accomplish our goals while sitting still" [what?], a curious mix of self-help and toxic positivity ("Americans like to put a brave [and] optimistic, spin on suffering"), and the widespread interest among patients and doctors in finding something more positive than battlefield terminology in the medical field.


No doubt these explanation are spot on, but I find it interesting that the article doesn't mention that the shift in the meaning of journey might have something to do with the widespread use of social media and its unfortunate side effect of making everyone think they're special. I know, it sounds like I'm scapegoating, but think about it: Is it really that hard to believe that the people who insist on sharing every thought that drifts into their head and every moment of their day, the people who take photos of themselves in the mirror at home AND at the gym, would want to reclassify something as mundane as getting a haircut or going to grocery shopping as part of some journey toward self empowerment or better health? These things used to be considered chores.


But hey, don't take my word for it. Read the article and let me know what you think.


II. Dictionary News


Trump's rebranding of the Gulf of Mexico to the "Gulf of America" has been a hot topic for the last month or so. Recently, things got a little hotter when the Encyclopedia Britannica announced it was refusing to alter the gulf's name.


Is AI Coming for Dictionaries? (QuickandDirtyTips.com)

In this article, lexicographer and Wordnik founder Erin McKean shared her thoughts on how AI is influencing the world of dictionaries—and why some of its promises don’t quite add up.


Enjoy this primer on the The Chicago Manual of Style, a "staple reference for writers and editors, in part because it was one of the first style guides to be published in book form."


Read reference books? Why not? "You'll learn, you'll laugh, and you (just might) find yourself engrossed." Or so says Book Riot.


"In defense of the much-maligned reference book."



III. Timely Tidbits from the BLRL


Pope Francis died April 21, 2025, and although I'm a mere shadow of the Catholic I used to be, I was sorry to hear the news. In a world where Christians are often the least Christ-like people around, I appreciated Francis's humility and humaneness.


Anyhoo, Francis's passing got me thinking about the papacy, and that reminded me of the book in the BLRL's collection that seems ripe for this moment, The Oxford Dictionary of Popes.


Holy moly, what a cool reference this is! Not only does it take you from St. Peter (aka: Peter the Apostle), the first pope, to John Paul II (who ascended to the papacy in 1978), but it also includes entries for the "antipopes" (i.e., the "irregularly elected rivals" of the officially recognized popes) throughout history, and digs deep into the schisms and squabbles that have plagued the church since seemingly day one.


Here's a sample from the entry on the second antipope in history, a cat known as Novatian:


NOVATIAN (antipope). Born c. 200, he was intellectually gifted and received, as his writings demonstrate, a first-rate literary and philosophical education. When he first appears, in 250, he was a leading presbyter (or elder) in the Roman church, author of a remarkable treatise on the Trinity which earned him the title of founder of Roman theology. His contemporary, Pope Cornelius, depicted him as a man of unattractive personal qualities, who had been uncanonically ordained despite the strong opposition of clergy and laity, but this was malicious gossip.


Spicy!


IV. New Additions to the BLRL

(Dictionaries, references, and other reference-adjacent books)


The Oxford Dictionary of Art


You'd think a dictionary of art would have images, drawings, or some other graphic element to it, but that is not the case with The Oxford Dictionary of Art (ODA). What you do get are words; lots and lots of words on western painters, artistic techniques, major galleries, and other art-related things. But hey, don't take my word for it. Here's some text about the ODA hefty artistic tome, which is something of a single-volume amalgam of The Oxford Companion to Art, The Oxford Companion to Twentieth Century Art, and The Oxford Companion to the Decorative Arts, from the book's foreward:


The aim [of the ODA] has been to provide an overview of Western art forms and of individual artists from antiquity to our own day. Architecture and architects have been excluded unless they have some relevance to painting. sculpture, the graphic arts, or design. [...] Oriental art has been included only in so far as it has had an influence on Western art.

The ODA also includes many artists and art terms omitted from [the prior volumes] entries one would now expect to find in a dictionary of art. Similarly, the number of entries for noteworthy collectors, patrons, dealers, and art historians has been much expanded and the scope of entries for museums and galleries has also been enlarged.

A dictionary of this kind is not intended to be encyclopedic, but we have

aimed at comprehensiveness within the limits defined above. Like the companion volumes, the ODA is meant for the layperson who needs reliable information in an easily accessible form; it is also designed to be a handy reference book for art students and teachers, Inevitably, there are omissions, and, as with all works of this nature, some new biographical facts about particular artists will emerge after its publication. The compiler has had to weigh the evidence available where facts, or their interpretation, are still in dispute, and we have had to make decisions in the light of that evidence.


If you're sensing a somewhat snooty tone, you're not imagining it. I blame the compiler.


The Concise Dictionary of Twenty-Six Languages


Whereas The Oxford Dictionary of Art had no art, The Concise Dictionary of Twenty-Six Languages has none of the things you'd typically find in a dictionary, such as meanings, etymologies, usage information, and the like. In fact, I'd go so far as to say this really isn't a dictionary at all. It's really just an alphabetical list of words in 26 languages. Here's an example:


elbow

French coude

Spanish codo

Italian gomito

Portuguese cotovêlo

Rumanian cot

German Ellenbogen

Dutch elleboog

Swedish armbåge

Danish albue

Norwegian albue

Polish łokieć

Czech loket

Finnish kynärpää

Serbo-Croat. lakat

Hungarian könyök

Turkish dirsek

Indonesian siku

Esperanto kubuto

Russian lókat

Greek ango'nas

Arabic mirfaq

Hebrew marpek

Yiddish elenboigen

Japanese hiji

Swahili kivi


Then again, the first dictionaries were just lists of words, so maybe I'm wrong (or faux, or falso, or sbagliato, or errado, or gresit ...) about this.


The Dictionary of the Undoing


And speaking of dictionaries that aren't really dictionaries, John Freeman's Dictionary of the Undoing is really a book of 26 essays, each of which has a one-word title, and the titles flow in alphabetical order. So, the first chapter is titled Agitate, the second is titled Body, the third is titled Citizen so on and so forth. Therefore, despite being described as a "lexicon of what should matter from A to Z," alphabetically ordered chapters is about as dictionary as things get, at least on a superficial level. However, as the author himself notes in the book's prologue:


This book is an attempt to ask [three] questions: What if our capacity to imagine has been so badly damaged by the information climate of our times that destruction is all we can see? What if deforming our ability to imagine the present is precisely what governments and power systems do to control us? And what if I told you we have the power to change this? I believe we do. To seize this power requires a radical change in perspective, however. To do so, we need to take one tool being vandalized before our very eyes--language--and reclaim it, and redefine what it means to be an ethical citizen in the present moment. We do not need to hunt the terms that have been weaponized into nonsense; we need to grab the words that have possibility in them and begin using them anew. Using these words expansively, carefully, and with the full extent of their meaning-- even if it is first in our heads--will ultimately lead to action.


So, once again, maybe I'm wrong, for what this book is really about is language--words--who gets to define them, who should define them, and why. In retrospect, it doesn't get any more "dictionary" than that.


For more information about this book, see this article from MPR News.


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That's all for now. See you next time.



 
 
 

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