OZ Words - Education and Life Skills

Aussie Slang
From Kel

OZWORD OF THE DAY:

Author is Kel (not me):

Quoted from my Mailbox:

Yesterday I mentioned a mystery novel called Guilty by Definition by Susie Dent, who is (more or less) England’s version of Kel Richards. In other words, she is a popular language journalist.

In Guilty by Definition, she has set the mystery in a fictional dictionary office in Oxford. She calls this dictionary the Clarendon English Dictionary (the CED) presumably to avoid being sued by the Oxford English Dictionary (the OED).

Yesterday I focussed on the rare, obscure or obsolete words she uses as chapter headwords. But what about the book? Is it something that a wordie such as you would enjoy? Yes. I have no hesitation in recommending it.

It is full of language and word puzzles, and for us word wizards it is great fun at that level. But it is also a first-class detective novel.

You know that whether a detective novel works, or not, all depends on the conclusion—the way it is all wrapped up in the end, and how the puzzles and mysteries are solved. If that is satisfactory, the whole book is satisfactory. And the end of Guilty of Definitionworks brilliantly at that level.

There are enough twists and surprises, and the loose ends are all tied up neatly enough, to make a detective novel reader (such as me) delighted. So, well done Susie Dent!

On the way through we are taken inside the working office of a major dictionary, and the tasks of the lexicographers—especially the job of ‘antedating’: tracking down the earliest appearance of a word in print.

For someone writing her first novel, Susie Dent does a first-class job giving us real, living, breathing people to feel sympathy with, and to care about.

It starts not as a murder mystery, but as missing person mystery. This ten-year-old case is reopened by a series of anonymous letters, filled with coded clues as to what happened. In the course of solving this mystery the small team of lexicographers find a rare and (breath-takingly) valuable 16th century manuscript.

The other thing I love about this book is… Oxford!

The city of Oxford is almost a character in this story (just as is the case in the “Morse” novels by Colin Dexter and the Morse, Lewis and Endeavour TV series inspired by them).

Now, a word of warning—Guilty by Definition is only in hardcover at the moment, so put in an application for your local library to get it for you or wait for the paperback. But don’t miss it.