A Florida school district has literally banned the dictionary in an effort to comply with Gov. Ron DeSantis‘s ® book-banning law.
The Escambia County School District has reportedly removed over 2800 books from library shelves as they undergo a review process that will determine if they are inappropriate for students, according to Popular Information. Among the books currently relegated to storage are The American Heritage Children’s Dictionary, Webster’s Dictionary for Students, and Merriam-Webster’s Elementary Dictionary.
The district contends these texts could violate H.B. 1069, which DeSantis signed into law in May 2023.
When I was a wee lad reading something I would ask my parents what words meant and we would look it up in the dictionary. Eventually I just did it by myself so the answer to your question is “most of them”. I haven’t had to check my dictionary for some time recently but my Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary is still in a prominent place in my bookcase, right next to my Roget’s II.
Given that dictionaries are a relatively recent development in history, and yet people did manage to speak English, I can guarantee you that ‘most of them’ is a massive over-estimate.
To be clear, I’m not trying to imply that dictionaries aren’t useful or that them being inaccessible is a good thing, but the fact of the matter is that the vast majority of people’s linguistic knowledge is learned unconsciously through context and simply talking and hearing other people speak.
Just to throw it at you, of your first sentence there:
I would essentially guarantee you didn’t learn any of those words by looking them up in a dictionary, and you probably knew them all before you could even read, with the exception of ‘dictionary’.
Just to chime in here again to you and the person you’re replying to. Maybe you can both lament with me. I learned many words the same way, having a parent that would grab a dictionary, and I do the same thing as a parent.
Let’s take a second to pour one out for the words we learned serendipitously, just flipping through the dictionary for fun, or an encyclopedia, or just the library stacks.
In so many ways, search engines, algorithms, and memes have robbed us of this.
Yeah you never forget your first Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.