Quote:
Originally Posted by JeremyR
I can see using a thesaurus while writing, if you are trying to write in a style not your own and want to convert the words you'd normally use to something else.
But a dictionary? That seems odd to me.
But dictionary while reading? To look up words they don't know. I seriously doubt most people know every single word in their native language. Beyond that, dictionaries are useful not just for definitions of words, but as a very simple Encyclopedia.
I was just reading a book that dealt with "Woolworth" paper. While I happened to be old enough to remember that Woolworth's was basically like Wal-Mart (cheap discount store) and thus the author presumably meant cheap, watermarkless paper, it might baffle a lot of people.
And for all I know, I might be wrong. Maybe it's a brand of paper in the UK. That's the other thing, English has at least 4 different types - American, British, Canadian, and Australian/New Zealand. While mostly we agree on names of objects, sometimes we have different ideas of what something is called. Good dictionaries will have meanings in different dialects.
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I found an article from 1893 dealing with Dr.Woolworth's paper.
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive...DA415B8385F0D3 Apparently he had a contract with the government to provide postcard paper but due to the inferior quality of his product he ran into problems. So it might not have anything to do with catalogs at all.