“The Dictionary of Lost Words,” by Pip Williams
Recently, I reviewed a nonfiction book titled “The Dictionary People,” by Sarah Ogilvie. It was about the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). This current review features a fiction book that tells a story with the OED as its background.
Esme Nicoll is the daughter of a scholar who works as a lexicographer in the Scriptorium, a small metal shed where the OED is being created, one word at a time. As a young girl, she sat under the work table of the men who were deciding which words and definitions to include, and she learned to read from the scraps of paper that drifted down to her.
Eventually, Esme becomes an assistant dictionary worker herself. She notices a lack of what she calls “women words” in the dictionary entries. These are words she hears in everyday communications in the street or at the market. But, because they are considered profane or “common,” they haven’t been written down.
On her own, she begins collecting these words, making entries of them on slips just like the regular dictionary entries she sees each day in the Scriptorium. She keeps a stack of these words in a suitcase hidden under a bed.
It is the era of the suffragette movement in England, and Esme becomes peripherally involved, finding more overlooked words among the women working for voting rights. Though her collection of words never makes it into the OED, there is eventually a book published in her honor titled “The Dictionary of Lost Words.”
Kerry Pettis is a retired elementary school teacher and children’s librarian who has lived in Broomfield since 1975. Reading is her favorite occupation.
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