Macquarie and Me

Disclaimer: If you’re not into extreme things like dictionaries, obscure words and timed challenges then I suggest you stop reading now.

For those of you that have decided to stick around, you’re in for a treat. I was recently forced to buy a physical copy of the Macquarie Concise Dictionary for a university subject I’m taking. You can imagine how unhappy I was to be spending money on what I viewed as an unnecessary lump of pulp, since all the information contained within (and much, much more) is available (for free) online. I was even more unhappy when I realised that dictionaries come in editions (because language evolves, forsooth!) and so the book I bought was only going to be unnecessary for a couple of years before it became unnecessary and outdated.  Combine all this with the inevitable crushed vertebrae that I’m guaranteed to sustain from carrying it in my backpack to class and you’ll understand that my new dictionary and I were off to a shaky start.

Partly in the interest of science—but mostly in a petty attempt to validate my theories on the pointlessness of paper dictionaries—I decided to conduct a quick test to see how much quicker using an online dictionary really was, and if there were any benefits of using a paper dictionary at all. I used a generator to create two lists of ten random words, one set of which I would look up via the Macquarie Online dictionary, the other via my new Macquarie Concise.

I’d highly recommend not stopping to think too long about the fact that I actually spent ten minutes of my life in a dimly lit room conducting this test, because frankly the whole thing is kind of weird and pathetic, and if you overthink it then you’ll feel sad for me, and the last thing weird pathetic people like me need is your pity, thank you very much.

On to the science. I vaguely recall learning how to structure a proper report in Year 8 and so I will proceed with the time honoured scientific tradition of winging things based on half-remembered facts.

Aim: To see if using an online dictionary is quicker, more efficient, and generally better than a paper dictionary.

Hypothesis: The online dictionary will be significantly quicker.

Method: I already outlined the method above, but for posterity’s sake here are the two sets of words:

Online: tiara, meal, ova, tidied, nab, kilogram, splint, began, laser, award

Paper: bomb, outcrop, smoke, era, noble, muscle, luncheon, ape, clean, finance

Results:

Online: 1 minute 26 seconds
Paper: 3 minutes 18 seconds

Using the online version was therefore more than twice as fast as using the paper version.

Discussion: At first I thought a minute or two didn’t seem like much of a difference, but it’s the relative difference between the two that count. If I were to extrapolate these results over the course of a lifetime I would end up spending extra years looking things up in a paper dictionary as opposed to online. You may think this wouldn't matter to somebody who went to the trouble of conducting this test in the first place, but even I have to draw the line somewhere.

It’s worth mentioning that using the paper dictionary quickly highlighted how unfamiliar I am with the order of the English alphabet. I actually had to quickly sing the song in my head every time I got to certain tricky spots such as ‘l-m-n-o-p’ and ‘q-r-s-t-u-v’. If somebody would like to comment and reassure me that they have a similar experience when using a dictionary that would be great, because otherwise I am genuinely worried that I have a learning disability which was never properly addressed when I was a child and has since been shoddily covered up with more impressive—but frankly less fundamentally important—topics like the Russian revolution and Kuhn’s paradigm theory.

Now, for the unexpected shock, which will no doubt have people writing angry emails to me demanding I retract my words (actually, I’m not going to pretend I get emails about this blog, because nobody has ever emailed me about it. I really appreciate you reading it though, and that means more to me than a thousand angry emails ever could). Despite my initial hatred for it, and the fact that it’s really inefficient, I found that I enjoyed using the paper dictionary. Before you accuse me of being a Luddite (I think I accuse myself of being a Luddite much more than anybody ever has or ever will. I have a blog called ‘the Digital Printing Press’, for god’s sake) I’d like you to hear me out.

First of all, there is something to be said for the actual physical presence of the dictionary. Stephen King observed that words have weight and my Macquarie—containing all the words—naturally has a lot of weight, both figuratively and literally.* As mentioned, this is a hindrance when toting it around (which is why ‘toting a dictionary’ is a verb-noun combination used about as often as ‘milking a gnat’) but kind of satisfying when it’s sitting on your desk. The thing just appears definitive and authoritative.

Speaking of authoritative, another nice thing about owning a dictionary is that you know, to a reasonable extent, that the information contained within it is reliable and consistent. I shudder to think how much work must go in to actually writing/editing a dictionary, and because of this I’m sure that the information contained within is taken very seriously by serious people in tweed jackets and plaid skirts. Contrast this with the compilers of online dictionaries, whom I imagine to be croc-wearing, Hackey sack-kicking layabouts much more interested in gaining revenue from ad click-throughs than the accuracy of their lexicography. 

The issue of consistency and accuracy is particularly important when you’re talking about words used in a particular region, like Australian English. I personally would not have a clue if ‘dictionary.com’ or ‘thefreedictionary.com’ is better for Australian users, and trying to find out this information on their websites was tricky and seemed to defeat the whole purpose of quick and easy service. Granted, the Macquarie dictionary is available at a price online (I conducted the test under a free trial subscription) and it has the benefit of being updated constantly, but if you’re the sort of person who pays for an online dictionary subscription then I imagine you’re also the sort of person who likes to have a dictionary sitting on your bookshelf anyway. In short, I suppose online dictionaries are generally good for quick, casual use, but if you’re serious about words then it’s hard to go past the authority and consistency of an actual book.

Another reason I liked the paper format was that it had great hidden benefits. The nature of flipping through pages when you’re using the dictionary means that you often stumble across great words accidentally. During the course of the challenge the word ‘feneckapants’ caught my eye. According to the Macquarie, it is ‘a colloquial term of endearment, used especially with children’, but I would imagine that if you try and call a child a ‘feneckapants’ you’re in for some distressed looks from the children’s parents, not to mention the child itself. I actually don’t think the meaning of feneckapants is as important as just seeing the actual combination of letters that make up the word so close together. It’s as if all the cool, edgy letters of the English alphabet (like f, a, k and p) have gotten together and formed a sort of supergroup. These are the sort of opportunistic discoveries that online dictionaries just can't provide.

I’m surprised (no doubt you are too) that I’ve been able to wring a thousand words out of dictionary usage so I will wrap things up here, and leave you with the thought that anybody who uses a paper dictionary may feel good doing it, but they ultimately risk being called an antiquated pretentious idiot. Personally I think this is a little unfair, as I take umbrage at being called ‘antiquated’.

*Okay, so maybe not all the words because I actually have the ‘concise’ version, but the title is really just an in-joke by lexicographers who no doubt think it is hilarious to label a 1,500 page tome ‘concise’.