You Could Look It Up (68 page)

directory
The classical Latin
dirigere
means “to direct”; in the Middle Ages, something that helps to direct—to give directions—became known as a
directorium
. James Harrison made it an English word in 1543 when he promised his book would include “An alphabetycall dyrectorye or Table.” The word has been applied to many varieties of reference books, especially guides to authorized prayers in the seventeenth century and “lists of the inhabitants of any locality, with their
addresses and occupations” in the eighteenth. Telephone numbers were added to directories early in the twentieth century.

enchiridion
The Greek
χε
ρ
(
kheir
or
chir
) means “hand”—the same root appears in
chiropractor
(one who works with his hands) and even in
surgeon
, which was once spelled
chirurgeon
. An
enchiridion
is therefore something small that goes in the hand—a handbook. In 1541, Miles Coverdale suggested that in compiling the first five books of the Bible, Moses made “an enchiridion and sum of all the acts of his time.”

encyclopedia
From Greek
ἐγκύκλιος παιδε
α
(
enkuklios paideia
). The
-cyc-
root is from Greek
κύκλος
(
kyklos
) ‘circle’, and the
-ped-
or
-paed-
root is from
παιδε
α
(
paideia
), ultimately from
παῖς
(
pais
) ‘child’, which means education or child rearing; the same root appears in
pediatrician
and
pedagogy
. The late Latin word
encyclopaedia
was long assumed to mean “the circle of learning” or “the circle of the sciences,” but it actually meant something like “rounded education.” Not until 1644 did the English use it to refer to a kind of book.

entry
French
entrer
comes from Latin
intrare
‘go into’. The noun
entry
‘that by which any place is entered’ appears in 1297, and ‘the action of coming or going in’ in 1330. A few decades later clerks could
enter
names and numbers into records, and the things so registered have been called
entries
since 1556.

etymology
In Hellenistic Greek,
ἔτυμον
(
etymon
) is the “true” or literal sense of a word. It got picked up in postclassical Latin, where it meant “word” more generally.
Etymology
, which started being used as an English word a little before 1400, is the study of word origins.

folio
From Latin
folium
‘leaf’, referring to the leaves of a book. A folio is the largest format of codex book, with sheets folded just once before being bound. A typical folio book is 15–20” (38–50 cm) tall, though a so-called “elephant folio” can be as tall as 50” (127 cm). Other formats are smaller: a
quarto
, with the sheets folded twice, is typically about 12” (30 cm) tall, and an
octavo
, with the sheets folded three times, about 9” (23 cm) tall.

gazetteer
A
gazetta
was a small coin used in early modern Venice. The Italian word made its way into French and then English. Because,
some speculate, Venetian newspapers typically cost one
gazetta
, it came to mean a news sheet, and a
gazetteer
was a news reporter. In 1692, Laurence Echard used the word in the title of
The Gazetteer’s, or, Newsman’s Interpreter: Being a Geographical Index
, and the term stuck for geographical dictionaries.

glossary
Greek
γλ
σσα
(
glossa
) means “tongue” or “language.” Originally a
gloze
,
glose
, or
gloss
was a word written in the margins or between the lines of a manuscript to explain the text. These marginal or interlinear explanations in the Bible or in legal texts were
glosses
; when they were all collected together, to give a list of words and passages that needed explanation, they became a
glossary
.

ghost word
A word that appears in a dictionary accidentally, without having any existence in the larger world. See chapter 10½.

handbook
The English was inspired by Latin
liber manualis
(the origin of our word
manual
) and Greek
enchiridion
.
Handbook
first showed up in English around the year 1000, when the monk Byrhtferð of Ramsey wrote of his “enchiridion (þæt ys manualis on Lyden and handboc on Englisc)”—“that is,
manual
in Latin and
handbook
in English.” Around 1538 the author of the
Encheridyon of a Spyrytuall Lyfe
explained the name: “It is called encheridion, in englysh, an hand booke, not only bycause it is small and portatyue [portable], but bycause it is (for the fruyte and vtylite [utility] therin) worthy and necessary to be had in in euery mans hande.” Related words appear in many Germanic languages: Dutch
handboek
, German
Handbuch
, Old Icelandic
handbók
.

headword
An obvious etymology from a pair of English words for the word that serves as a heading in a reference book—the word being defined in a dictionary, the entry being discussed in an encyclopedia. Headwords are often typographically distinctive (capitals, boldface, indented, large type) to facilitate skimming. Sometimes known as a
lemma
(plural
lemmas
or
lemmata
), from Greek
λῆμμα
‘something taken’. Headwords are often reduced to their most basic form:
approvingly
appears under
approve
. The process of reducing words to this form is called
lemmatization
.

herbal
Latin
herba
‘grass, green crops’ became French
erbe
became Middle English
erbe
around 1290, a plant without a woody stem. In medieval Latin a book about plants was a
liber herbalis
, which led to the practice of referring to an English book about plants—especially the medical uses of plants—as a
herbal
in 1516.

index
Latin
index
‘forefinger’ comes from
dic-
‘to point out’—compare
indicate
. English picked up the forefinger meaning at the end of the fourteenth century; it came to mean any sort of pointer, literal or metaphorical, at the end of the sixteenth century. One of those “pointers” was the list of names or subjects that “pointed” to the places they appeared in a book. Early modern books often had more than one index: an
index nominum
for names, an
index locorum
for places, and an
index rerum
for subjects.

information
A complicated word with a complicated history—as James Gleick notes, the revised
OED
entry for the word “now runs 9,400 words, the length of a novella. It is a sort of masterpiece—an adventure in cultural history.” The Latin root
forma
‘shape, appearance’ led to
informare
‘to give form to, to shape’. An act of giving shape is Latin
informatio
, which could also mean “teaching”—the word’s first English meaning, starting in the late fourteenth century. From there it came to encompass knowledge or news more generally. Mathematicians came up with formal definitions starting in the early twentieth century, and they discovered surprising connections between information and entropy.

latent words
Latin
latens
‘lurking, hiding’ gives us
latent
. Some lexicographers use the term
latent words
to refer to those for which there are no records of their ever having existed, especially derived forms.
Restaurantlike
,
pentagonality
,
liturgicalness
, and
uncruciform
are perfectly plausible English words—they are not
ghost words
, which are the result of accident—but they may never have been used in the real world. Some dictionaries, eager to run up their word count for advertising purposes, list many such words.

lexicographer
A postclassical Greek word, from
λεξικόν
(see below) and
γράφειν
(
graphein
) ‘to write’. Since 1658,
lexicographer
has been the English word for a writer of dictionaries. Samuel Johnson’s
famous definition may be the final word on the subject: “a writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words.”

lexicon
We can trace it all the way back to Greek
λέγειν
(
legein
) ‘to speak’; from that root came the noun
λέξις
(
lexis
) ‘word, phrase’ and the adjective
λεξικός
(
lexikos
) ‘related to words’. A
βιβλ
ον λεξικόν
(
biblion lexikon
) was a wordbook. Today
lexicon
is often used interchangeably with
dictionary
, although in German-speaking countries it is often used for encyclopedic works.