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.
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.