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Of course, there are many problems to be solved in reading a book well other than those arising from an author's vocabulary. And we have warned against-particularly on the first reading of a difficult book-sitting with the book in one hand and the dictionary in the other. If you have to look up too many words at the beginning, you will certainly lose track of the book's unity and order. The dictionary's primary service is on those occasions when you are confronted with a technical word or with a word that is wholly new to you. Even then, we would not recommend looking up even these during your first reading of a good book unless they seem to be important to the author's general meaning.

This suggests several other negative injunctions. There is no more irritating fellow than the one who tries to settle an argument about communism, or justice, or freedom, by quoting from the dictionary. Lexicographers may be respected as authorities on word usage, but they are not the ultimate founts of wisdom. Another negative rule is: Don't swallow the dictionary. Don't try to get word-rich quick by memorizing a fancy list of words whose meanings are unconnected with any actual experience. In short, do not forget that the dictionary is a book about words, not about things.

If we remember this, we can derive from that fact all the rules for using a dictionary intelligently. Words can be looked at in four ways.

1. WORDS ARE PHYSICAL THINGS-Writable words and speakable sounds. There must, therefore, be uniform ways of spell-Aids to Reading 1 81

ing and pronouncing them, though the uniformity is often spoiled by variations, and in any event is not as eternally important as some of your teachers may have indicated.

2. WoRDs ARE PARTS oF SPEECH. Each single word plays a grammatical role in the more complicated structure of a phrase or sentence. The same word can vary in different usages, shifting from one part of speech to another, especially in a non-inflected language like English.

3. WoRDs ARE SIGNS. They have meanings, not one but many. These meanings are related in various ways. Sometimes they shade from one into another; sometimes a word will have two or more sets of totally unrelated meanings. Through their meanings, different words are related to one another-as synonyms sharing in the same meaning even though they differ in shading; or as antonyms through opposition or contrast of meanings. Furthermore, it is in their capacity as signs that we distinguish words as proper or common names ( according as they name just one thing or many that are alike in some respect ) ; and as concrete or abstract names ( according as they point to something we can sense, or refer to some aspect of things that we can understand by thought but not observe through our senses ) .

Finally, 4. WORDS ARE CONVENTIONAL, They are man-made signs. That is why every word has a history, a cultural career in the course of which it goes through certain transformations.

The history of words is given by their etymological derivation from original word-roots, prefixes, and suffixes; it includes the account of their physical changes, both in spelling and pronunciation; it tells of the shifting meanings, and which among them are archaic and obsolete, which are current and regular, which are idiomatic, colloquial, or slang.

A good dictionary will answer all of these four different kinds of questions about words. The art of using a dictionary 182 HOW TO READ A BOOK

consists in knowing what questions to ask about words and how to find the answers. We have suggested the questions.

The dictionary itself tells you how to find the answers.

As such, it is a perfect self-help book, because it tells you what to pay attention to and how to interpret the various abbreviations and symbols it uses in giving you the four varieties of information about words. Anyone who fails to consult the explanatory notes and the list of abbreviations at the beginning of a dictionary has only himself to blame if he is not able to use it well.

How to Use an Encyclopedia

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