Dictionary of Modern Times - prefixes: a brief history of the dictionary & a note on method

A Brief History of the Dictionary

A dictionary historically and predominantly has been a collection of definitions of words and sometimes brief phrases—often including etymologies, grammatical functions, pronunciations­— ... definitions which are proper—that is, oriented to the serious and firm operations of society.  Exceptions—primarily the notable Bierce and his less notable successors—exist; (Bierce might be said to contain more truth but less utility than his mainstream equivalents, even as we aim here for more—not truth, for who aims for that these days? but—love, viewing utility merely as a function [and hardly one of its most important] of love).

Yet there is a gap.  There are always gaps.  (Gaps exist to be filled so that new gaps can be created.  This is not an error:  we can’t help but be the homo gapus gapus that we are.  Error—itself a form of truth; thus, like utility, now subservient to love—creeps in when value is inevitably imposed onto the gaps, the filling, the creating.  We do what we must do, even as trees leaf and shed and cockroaches scurry and startle.  Homo errorus errorus.)

We, thus, being made to fill and create gaps and not much more, fill and create this gap:  the dictionary of modern times.  Which seeks to capture less the technical definitions of an age than free the spirits of an age by means of the caprice of defining, thus subverting the definitional task and engaging in the poet’s perpetual task of the (re-) liberation of language.  (Knowing caprice is the beat of love’s dancing stable heart.)  It aims less to please the serious operations of society and more to please that which those operations are devoted to denying.  It aims to be systematic, but according to the systems that create new worlds rather than those that ossify existing ones.  If these creative systems are not well understood, well then, perhaps this dictionary can be an aid to further understanding—not necessarily in the individuality of any entry, but in the conglomerate effect of the whole.  And, truly, is not this the only way we effectively understand anything?

For no word exists in isolation; there is no platonic word:  this is the error of the conventional dictionary which, while it seeks—it must seek—to define a word with other words (even our dictionary does not attempt to escape this directly, but indirectly, by travelling to the center of language itself), still maintains the pretense that certain other particular words and sets of other particular words, set in certain styles against certain backdrops, are closer to what we should expect are the truth of the word being defined rather than only one of an infinite myriad of possibilities, restricted only by the fetters we put on imagination and freedom.  In other words, the conventional dictionary approaches language from the necessary societal perspective of death whereas our dictionary—for the first time—approaches language from a necessary aesthetic perspective of life.  This, then, is the first gaseous dictionary, a dictionary of the spirit, of things not as they are—or seem, or pretend to be—in themselves, but as they are—or seem, or pretend to be—in others or, rather, in that ineffable numinous space between.  Even as each of us is recognized only in the dissolving mirror of the other (or the same in ourselves as we see ourselves dissolving in that other mirror that dissolves, in another).

One might also call it a mystic’s dictionary—and this would be less and more precise, but possibly misleading (for the pretentious overtones which would likely be imposed by a naïve readership—for which mystic has cared about language as a face of god ... or, rather, cared about god as a face of language?)  From an eastern perspective (if we are permitted [but being westerners, we permit ourselves]), we could think of the Dictionary of Modern Times as a haiku dictionary—not, naturally, in any literal sense, but as if the definitions were written by a haiku, a haiku made flesh.

(One might also call it Humpty Dumpty's Dictionary, but this would be too easily misunderstood by all the false eggs out there.)

A dictionary not of and by and for the people—not user-led and edited:  some tricktionary—but of and by and for language.  We introduce to you the first dictionary of language; all dictionaries to date have, most misleadingly, been dictionaries of words—worse, of Word:  offering solid mental images of artifacts and concepts of human projection, a form of the puerile project of god.  Instead, i place Word, word and words where they belong—in language:  that is, as gas, of feeling.  For most, language—and so a dictionary—is a monument, a stolidity, a once-and-for-all ... but dictionaries should dance:  everyone should have their own!:  the dictionary an unchoreographed choreography of each, all dictionaries!

The reader should be aware that grammatical functions are not provided (all language parts are verbs), etymologies are not provided (all language derives from darkness), and pronunciations are not provided (the reader should attempt to read the text aloud in Westminster and if she be understood she may interpret this as her having pronounced improperly).

Finally, it has been suggested by some—some of whom some don’t consider entirely “with it”—that the entries in DoMT (pronounced dom-tea), as it is sometimes affectionately known, are in the order of degree of irony:  though from greatest to least or least to greatest it is debated.  Others, however, disagree, and posit an order not unrelated to the recent coup in Guinea-Bissau.  Regardless, the one thing almost all agree on (Flipp, an accomplished South Dakotian cowherd, is a notable exception) is that the entries are not in alphabetic order.

A Note on Method

We use—that is, we embody—the claimed values and valued methods and methodical claims of modernity:  narration, diversity&multiperspectivity, absurdity, non-linearity, mutability, ellipticality, relationalicalness, fleetingness&momentariation & gasity.