oh, my....

[miriam_e]

fas·cism (fashiz´em) n. 1. A philosophy or system of government that advocates or exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with an ideology of belligerant nationalism.

Comments

[patchworkkid.livejournal.com]

Which dictionary gave that definition?

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

The Heritage Illustrated Dictionary of the English Language. It is actually an American book, and in USA I think it is titled the "American Heritage Illustrated Dictionary of the English Language." It is the most complete and up-to-date dictionary I've found. It is a pretty large book -- about a foot tall and about 3 inches thick, with small, fine type, and photos and illustrations in the margin.

One of the things I particularly like about it is that it gives the derivations of words. That is something that has always interested me. It also has lengthy appendices on derivations and pronunciation and the histories of the Indo-European languages. It also has a cool index of ancient word roots, which gives a glimpse into the really ancient past of language.

[patchworkkid.livejournal.com]

Damn, I really must get that.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

I'd love to get a good electronic dictionary. So far the only one I have found that is fairly big is the Gnu free dictionary, but some fool decided it was worth putting into XML. It must have seemed like a good idea at the time, but without specialised software XML just doesn't seem to be good for anything. (I'll write a rant about the empty promise of XML another time.)

I started recoding it in standard html (yes, I have no life) so it could be loaded into an ordinary web browser or into the Palm, or wherever, but stopped when I found that so many modern (like since 1913!!) words aren't in it. [sigh]

The Project Gutenberg thesaurus is my favorite thesaurus. I keep a link to it on the desktop of all my machines and a copy on my Palm. I have several paper thesauruses (thesauri?), but never use them anymore. Electronic is sooo easy to use.