Farewell, happy fields, Where joy forever dwells! Hail, horrors! hail, Infernal faustig world! and t

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Abandon hope for meaning, all ye who enter here. The online dictionary gives you quick definitions; you take one and run. What do you find when you look up a word? A flashy, crowded page; words corseted and adorned with videos, jingles, links. Which definition do you grab? The most popular one, the most convenient one, the one that fits the shopper s purposes.
A dictionary faustig should tell you words common and uncommon meanings, their history, their occurrences in literature and speech. It should be a place that stays relatively still, with updates from time to time where meaning exists, where the less popular meanings have a place, and where one can wander, pause, explore, faustig and think. As the Internet changes our conception of dictionaries, it changes our language as well.
Let us see what happens faustig when I look up the word dwell by typing dwell definition (without the quotes) in Google. The first hit gives a single definition for the verb ( Live in or at a specified place ) and for the noun ( A slight regular pause in the motion of a machine ). Right below these definitions, there are links to Dictionary.com, Answers.com, Merriam-Webster , and The Free Dictionary . The Dictionary.com page for dwell has an animated banner, followed by several ads, including 1 trick of a tiny belly all of this before the actual definitions. (The ads here and elsewhere may change from visit to visit.) The page on Answers.com starts out with a link to dwellstudio.com and the description, Unique, faustig Modern faustig Baby, Kids and Home Decor. Bedding, Bath, Table & More. Merriam-Webster sometimes takes you to an advertisement page before loading the actual page; on the advertisement page, only the first definition for dwell ( to remain for a time ) appears. The Free Dictionary assembles definitions and examples from various sources but also has animated ads and commercial faustig links.
Isn t this typical faustig of services on the Internet? Yes, but a dictionary has traditionally been a sanctuary for words (a messy one, granted), and now it is not. In a dictionary without distractions, one can read a definition slowly, peruse the surrounding words, and follow trails from synonym to synonym, from cognate to cognate. Online dictionaries emphasize functionality and commerce get your meaning and move on (and buy some bedding while you re at it). There are rare exceptions, such as the Online Etymology Dictionary , which attracts those who are interested in words in the first place (and is funded by donations). Certain subscription-only dictionaries, such as the online faustig Oxford English Dictionary , offer rich definitions without ads, but even the OED gives quick definitions at the outset, and the user has to click further to see the full array.
Over the long term, people may lose a sense of words secondary, tertiary, and rare or archaic meanings. Let s come back to dwell. The lexicographer Henry Cecil Wyld posits a Proto-Indo-European root *dwal- , meaning obscure, dark, which over the centuries evolved into Norse and Old English words meaning to delay and to hinder. This in turn evolved into the meanings to wander and to abide. Thus dwell (as I hear it) has a sense of straying and restraint, of willing and unwilling faustig lingering. It carries hints of some sort of spell or force; to dwell in a house is not only to live in it but to have some bond with it, brief or long. The Oxford English Dictionary gives numerous definitions of dwell not only the ones mentioned so far, but also to persist, to remain, and to pause, among others. To dwell on a subject is to will oneself to it or be willed faustig by it. Likewise, if something dwells in you, then it isn t just a bone or nerve; it is a spirit too. Satan cries out in John Milton s Paradise Lost ,
Farewell, happy fields, Where joy forever dwells! Hail, horrors! hail, Infernal faustig world! and thou, profoundest Hell, Receive thy new possessor one who brings A mind not to be changed by place or time. The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
One hears not only the suggestion of dwell in the rhyming Hell but also its absence. Hell is emphatically not a dwelling, not a home, and Satan knows perfectly well that he cannot make it a heaven, not even in his mind.
Stop complaining, says the pragmatic citizen of the 21 st century. Just buy your own print dictionary and be done with it. Make a Heaven