SAVE THE DICTIONARIES
April Thayer
I changed my home page to Google, and put a custom face on it to tickle my fancy. I set up a tree frog that slowly approaches my cursor, a clock with the date, three or four pithy quotes, news headlines from a couple of providers, a couple of Wiki-Hows and Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day.
I love words. My word of the day delivery system got stuck on “palinode” for a while, so I removed it from my home page and signed up for daily email delivery of the Word of the Day – those Merriam-Webster folks are good Boy Scouts – they are prepared! Today’s word is “retronym.” Look it up.
I was feeling fondly for them until I realized my 17 year old will probably never buy a dictionary in his life. I have three – if I had space for it, I’d buy the Oxford English Dictionary to add to my collection. He’ll go online. What a shame! A dictionary is a work of art.
Well, I’m sure the fine folks at Merriam-Webster have been thinking about the same things. They have word games on their Word of the Day page (like I really needed to know that.) Can’t make much money from that, though…they should have good sweatshirts and hoodies if they don’t already. I have a couple of word freak friends who would like to wear good words, and that would solve that holiday gift problem.
But what else could they sell? Brand extension in the dictionary business isn’t easy. Any ideas?
The campaign I came up with… SAVE THE DICTIONARIES. It has a nice ring to it.