Tuesday's Tidbit!

On time.

Expanding your knowledge.
Push your Brain further than you did yesterday. Buy a dictionary.

Last night Daniel was reading from the works of John Taylor. Our
first Christmas married my grandparents gave us a set of the Teachings of the Prophets. It has
a volume for every prophet through President Hinckley and an index an inch wide to all of
them. Daniel has been reading random sections here and there to learn more of what the
Prophets say. He read me a sentence that had there three words in succession: multitudinous
latitudinarian
principles. Can you pronounce them? I have a hard time, as does Daniel.
They make sense to me because I just look at the original words, multitude=lots,
latitude=line, principles. Lots of straight lined principles. But that takes translation. In
order to minimize translation, we need to expand vocabulary.

My little sister (17) is a pruduct of this. She is the youngest in a family that
likes to learn. We all have a decent vocabulary. My dad teaches at the U, my mom reads
prolifically, as well as having to keep up on her job knowledge for certification, I lived at
home all five years of college, Taylor's hobbies include looking things up for fun. I mean
really. She says she uses words that many of her friends don't understand and then they ask
her to use smaller words. At girls camp one year she was given the title "Grammar Queen." I
have a grandmother who taught English before having a family.

I remember when some of Taylor's friends were over and we said something that they
did not know the definition of. So we pulled out our well used dictionary and looked it up. He
thought we were crazy for doing that. My grandparents also have their dictionary easily
accessible. It's great.

Now I'm just rambling. Buy a dictionary that you
can have on hand. Actually look things up when you don't know exactly what they mean. Make the
next book you read just a bit more difficult, deep, or extensive than the last one you
read.

I told Daniel that a friend of ours was going to
incorporate the study of physiognomy in Victorian England in her senior paper this year. He
didn't think it was a word. We pulled out our dictionary and I proved to him it was and then
read him the definition. I love learning. I challenge you all to do the same.
p.s. Can I confess that I really want a hard copy
of the complete Oxford English Dictionary? It's on Amazon.
It's 20 volumes and includes the etymology of
each word.