The man who reads dictionaries

The prospect of talking to a man who reads dictionaries for fun prompts a sudden vocabulary-insecurity complex and a fear that every word he utters might sound like a painful medical condition.

But thanks to Ammon Shea's belief that long words only hinder conversations, there's no need to consult any dictionaries while he clearly explains his eccentric hobby.

"I'm not against big words per se or fancy or obscure words, obviously I love them, but I'm opposed to using them for their own sake," he says.

"If words are to form a communication, you use them as a tool to communicate to people and it's pointless to intentionally use a word that no-one else knows."

Mr Shea, a 37-year-old former furniture remover in New York, has spent 12 months conquering what he describes as the Everest of dictionaries, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), by ploughing through 20 volumes weighing a total of 137lbs.

In the process, he became the Morgan Spurlock of lexicologists, devouring words for eight to 10 hours a day, which caused him severe headaches, deteriorating eyesight and injuries to his back and neck. So why bother?

"I've always enjoyed reading dictionaries and they are far more interesting than people give them credit for. And I think everything you find in a great book you would find in a great dictionary, except for the plot.

"All the normal emotions - grief, happiness and loss exist in a dictionary but not necessarily in the order that you would think."
 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7654511.stm
 
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{ Words are fascinating. The building blocks of language and the soul of communication. Words can also be used to confuse, to enrage, to seduce and to utilized every emotion known to man. Words are emotion, intellect and everything in between. When comedian/activist Lenny Bruce was on trial for obscenity his plaintive cry was " Don't take away my words!". Dissident Playwright and first President of the Czech republic Vaclav Havel said he remained a free man in Communist controlled Czechoslovakia no matter how many times they threw him in jail because he never gave them his words. "I always spoke as a free man" he said.

Words and the ideas and emotions they express may turn out to be the greatest achievement of our species and may be all we leave behind when our time on this planet is up. We are the planet of words.}