Department of Spell Check

Another very surprising omission from the MS Word spell-check dictionary: scry. I thought at first I had  misspelled the word, so I typed it out again.  Still misspelled.  I typed it out again. Still misspelled.  Then I had a moment of paralyzing doubt:  maybe this word doesn't exist.  I think it does.  But maybe since it's late, my mind is playing tricks on me.   I had to cut-and-past from my document into the dictionary to ascertain that I was not, in fact, losing my marbles.  Besides, I've been scrying in my crystal ball.  I won't loose my marbles for at least another three months.

Department of Spell-Check

Another day, another set of reading notes, and another word not found in the MS Word dictionary: plagiarization.  As in, a good number of pamphlets on everything from astrological prognostication to the best way to grow cabbages were simply plagiarizations** and cut-and-pastings of other, earlier works.  The OED has quotations for this noun form starting only in the rather late nineteenth century, with the latest quotation taken from the Economic Times from 2003, to wit: "Plagiarisation has become a habit with today's music directors and it probably existed before I was born. There's nothing wrong in it." Well, it certainly has existed for quite a while, in all aspects of creative life, but as to the fact that there is nothing wrong with it, well....

Plagiarism has indeed had a long and venerable history blah blah blah Adrian Johns' Piracy*** blah blah blah.  Now back to my regularly scheduled readings.


** Though, to be fair, I just google-booked the word inside of the book I just read, and the word doesn't appear there either.  But, the OED says it's a word, so I'm running with it.  I like it better than plagiarism in the context in which I have written it.

*** Really good book, and my 'blah's really don't do it justice.

Department of spell-checking

The word 'alterity' isn't recognized by Microsoft Word's spell check.  A quick gander at the OED entry tells me that the word became more widely used in 20th century critical and cultural theory (not something that the writers of whatever dictionary Microsoft uses are too familiar with, I guess), but at any rate, the earliest quotation is from 1425:

Speculum Sacerdotale 234   Sche [sc. woman] made an alterite and an oþerhede in that tyme, that sche made alienacion and partynge bitwene God and man.

 I also found an awesome (now obsolete) synonym in differency.  I think I'm going to incorporate that into my vocabulary after this.  Or not.