My children have informed me that keeping an unabridged dictionary at the dinner table is not normal. I didn’t know that. While the dictionary was not on the dining table in my childhood home, it was close at hand. We weren’t allowed to read while we ate. Dinner was reserved for conversation. In our home, dinner was the noon meal. We were expected to be at the table for most of an hour. Our father closed his business from 12 to 1 pm to come home and share a meal. If a salesperson or customer was in the shop at noon, that person was generally invited to dinner at our house. On Sundays, if there was a guest preacher at church, our father rushed to be the first to ask that preacher and family to our house for dinner. Mother was good at stretching a meal plan for extra servings.

The dictionary was on another table in the room, but we were allowed to get up to look up a word and read from it if it was relevant to the conversation.

When I became an adult, I started with Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. It was what we had, and unabridged dictionaries were expensive. Our first unabridged was an American Heritage Dictionary, followed by Webster's a while later. I used to find occasions to compare the two. The American Heritage seemed quicker to adopt new words and was a bit more inclusive of the slang of farmers and ranchers, which was part of my vocabulary.

All along, I had a particular lust for the Oxford English Dictionary. I first encountered the multi-volume set in the Joseph Regenstein Library of the University of Chicago. It was amazing! I began to look at the volumes in used bookstores, but even a few years old, the set was beyond my means.

However, we did keep a dictionary handy at the dining table. Before we had children, we hosted an exchange student from Guatemala, and a Spanish-English dictionary became an essential part of family dinners. Later, when our children were teens, another exchange student made the Japanese-English dictionary a necessary element at our dinner table. All along, we kept referring to the big dictionaries.

Times have changed. We no longer keep a dictionary at the table. When we moved from South Dakota, I let go of our unabridged dictionaries, which had become dated. These days, we look up words on our cell phones. We discourage using cell phones at the table, but we make an exception when looking up a word.

Technology has given me access to the Oxford English Dictionary, which no longer publishes a print edition. A half million words are at my fingertips. The phone application has a place to enter a word, which might take a couple of attempts if the spelling is uncertain, and back comes the meaning. It lacks some of the pleasure of a print dictionary as it is not convenient to browse for new words. I used just to read the dictionary, cruising for new words.

However, I love the OED website's word of the day feature, a sure way to add to one’s vocabulary. The website also lists recently added words and phrases and updated entries. Each word has a tab for meaning and use, another for pronunciation, featuring both English and American, a tab with the word's Etymology, and a Factsheet.

There are always surprises in the list of recently added words. For example, this year was the first time the OED published a full entry for the phrase “bombs away.” Since it has been in everyday use since World War II, I’ve thought of it as a phrase that has existed all my life. My father was a pilot, and although he didn’t fly in combat, he carried plenty of live bombs that were dropped on training ranges, flying as an instructor pilot and a training pilot for bombarders during the war. The OED waited until the phrase became more generally used for things other than dropping weapons from airplanes, including the general use: “an exclamation used when acting, such as dropping or throwing something, or making a great leap, often expressing cheerful bravado.” For what it is worth, it is pronounced the same in American English as in England.

I’m delighted with another 2025 entry I’ve known about for a while. The OED periodically includes words from other languages adopted by English speakers so commonly as to be a part of the general vocabulary. This year, they added the simple Spanish “tres leches.” It is easily translatable as “three milks,” but the Spanish sounds better. If you haven’t had it, tres leches is a sponge cake soaked in whole, evaporated, and condensed milk. We first discovered it when we visited Costa Rica, but it is currently showing up on menus in US restaurants.

A new entry that I will use comes to English from the Philippine language, Tagalog. “Gigil” is “an intense feeling caused by anger, eagerness, or the pleasure of seeing someone or something cute or adorable, typically physically manifested by the tight clenching of hands, gritting of teeth, trembling of the body, or the pinching or squeezing of the person or thing causing the emotion.” WOW! One word for all of that. I like a concept that makes me both angry and causes pleasure. Think of cat videos on YouTube. I like the first ones I see, but after a while, I’m angry that people don’t have more productive things to do than make stupid cat videos. It also explains my aunt, who pinched my cheeks every time she saw me and made me want to run away in horror.

I’m against using cell phones at the dinner table, but I’ll make an exception for the OED.