A quick Booking Through Thursday:

I’ve always wondered what other people do when they come across a word/phrase that they’ve never heard before. I mean, do they jot it down on paper so they can look it up later, or do they stop reading to look it up on the dictionary/google it or do they just continue reading and forget about the word?

If I can get the gist from the context, I may make a mental note to look it up later, and then forget about it forever, most likely. Occasionally, though, I run across a word that just can’t figure out, and it those cases it’ll drive me crackers until I get up and find it in a dictionary. On extremely rare occasions, even the dictionary is no help. While reading Psychic Dictatorship in America (an exposé of the I AM Activity cult written in the 1930s) I pondered and pondered the phrase “precipitated dinners”. I mean, it either means they ate really fast, or the dinners were going to be “rained down from the heavens” or something. Considering the subject matter, I’m voting for the latter. Even looking it up online, I only found more references to Psychic Dictatorship in America.

I know a couple of different people who even as teenagers kept dictionaries next to their beds. I always thought this was a good idea, but never managed to get into the habit.