Words for Nerds (part one)

Some thoughts on a few words that have different or additional meanings in the early 21st century. I have included the Macquarie Dictionary’s ‘common’ definition of these words for comparison. Where more than one definition exists I have tried to list the one that seems most appropriate to the online/digital/new/additional definition.

stalk – v. ‘to pursue or approach game, etc.’ Derived from the Old English stealcian – to move stealthily. Stalk generally has perverse AFK connotations but has become almost acceptable online in the modern era. To stalk someone (esp. on Facebook) can, these days, often be a legitimate forerunner to in-person contact. In this sense, modern usage of stalk seems to have regressed closer to the original meaning of the word: an AFK stalker often isn’t necessarily ‘stealthy’, because they make their presence known through letters, calling, following closely etc., whereas stalking online indeed retains its surreptitious element. Of course the online stalker often feels the need to make a confession of their activity to a close friend, perhaps as a way to relieve a guilty conscience.

friend – n. ‘Someone attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard.’ The Macquarie lists ‘friend’ as a noun but in contemporary reality (esp. since the days of Myspace) it can also be used as a social media verb, as in: ‘I friended them’. Although English already has a verb for this (to befriend) it seems needlessly formal and unsuitable for the fleeting and/or typically nominal nature of Facebook friendship. Also note the addition of a new verb; unfriend, officially used by Facebook (and not listed by the Macq.). It’s worth mentioning that Facebook uses the terminology ‘add as friend’, that is, the ability to perform an action and add someone to the stock of your friendship pools. Friendship thus is robbed of the often gradual relationship construction that occurs in real life; there are no grey-area ‘I know of them’ acquaintances on Facebook. The distinction is binary: you’re either friends or you’re not.

follow – v. ‘to watch the movements, progress, or course of.’ Macq. doesn’t provide the online version of follow in its Twitter sense, that is, to subscribe to somebody’s feed. In terms of social media, following exists somewhere between stalking and friendship. Follow and friend have similar uses as a verb but different connotations: ‘following’ somebody is much less intimate and professes no personal relationship with that person, but to follow someone is a much more transparent act than stalking them. Also, like Facebook, Twitter has introduced ‘unfollow’ into the vocabulary.

cloud – n. ‘a visible collection of particles of water or ice suspended in the air, usually at an elevation above the earth's surface ... [or] any similar mass’. In the 21st century the word refers to the cloud, the mass of data particles accessible by users, a great cloud hovering above, at any time threatening to rain bits and bytes upon us. Just like its meteorological cousin, the cloud appears to exist and is technically definable but cannot be physically grasped. However, unlike meteorological clouds, the user (i.e. us) performs an important part of cloud formation by sending particles up instead of passively receiving precipitation. The printed Macq. doesn’t define cloud in its computer sense, but does note the phrase ‘to have one’s head in the clouds’ as being ‘divorced from reality; be in a dreamlike state’ which, when considering the 1000-yard stare of smartphone and tablet users on public transport, arguably comes close.

search – v. ‘to go or look through carefully in seeking to find something’. It’s a well-known observation that the term ‘google’ (no caps, generic trademark rules apply) is used interchangeably with ‘search’ these days, but I don’t think they are truly synonymous. To google something seems almost fleeting, an act of speed. ‘I’ll google it,’ means to find a quick answer to binary questions, such as ‘Where is the bar?’ or ‘Who is the President of Guatemala?’ To my mind, ‘searching’ implies more in-depth techniques to resolve questions which may ultimately be unanswerable or have multiple answers: one googles the address of a particular bar but searches for a place that serves half-price Martinis on a Wednesday night.

stream – n. ‘a body of water flowing in a channel or bed, as a river rivulet or brook’ or ‘a continuous flow or succession of anything.’ Part of the beauty of a natural stream is the tension of knowing that it is potentially finite; the data stream, however, seems assured, continuous, unending—there is no beauty, mystery or tension. These days online streams seem to have been replaced by deluges, e.g. check your Twitter deluge. Stream can also be used as a verb in the internet sense, as in to tap into data, to take (usually for free) and redirect it for your own personal gains, à la AFK practices of damming or redirecting natural streams for energy/moneymaking purposes.

window – n. ‘an opening in the wall or roof ... commonly fitted with a frame in which are set movable sashes containing panes of glass.’ The act of using the computer is itself looking through the window of the screen, which is then (even on a Mac) divided into further windows which can also be looked through. We are in effect looking through a window to see more windows, and while the screen is generally inert and inflexible the windows in the window are moveable, resizeable—able to be opened and closed at whim to let through information/data/thoughts/feelings. These windows are easy enough to open but can be difficult to shut.

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’.