I was the kind of geeky kid who took extra long to finish my spelling homework because I got distracted by words glimpsed on the dictionary page, words that had nothing to do with my assignment. (I took extra long to complete math homework for other reasons too embarrassing to describe here, but all too easy for you to imagine.) When I read the first of Terry Pratchett's delightful Tiffany Aching novels, The Wee Free Men, I immediately identified with Tiffany. She read the whole dictionary from front to back.
As I've mentioned elsewhere, a new computer has entered my life within the last ten days or so. A couple of things irk me about the new hardware; if there's a simple way to print a single page from the middle of a manuscript I've yet to discover it. (By simple, I mean a button that reads "print current page." I can print according to page number, but for reasons I won't go into here that can be a little dicey.)
Today I discovered an unexpected quality in the new 'puter that made me laugh outloud, so loudly I scared Gizmo, my little whippet, clean out of his nap under my chair. He actually shot out of the room for a minute, then crept back in with all due caution. My former computer's thesaurus function was easy to use and sophisticated enough in its offerings that a critique partner of mine once forbade me to use it for a week. "I can tell when you've looked up alternative words," she scolded me.
Occasionally I bewailed the fact that old 'puter had a rather formal stance when it came to language options. Today I discovered that my slick new machine has no such qualms. I looked up the word "pricked" on the thesaurus in an attempt to select a more accurate word for what happens when a soldier holds a sword point to someone's throat. Apparently my computer mistook the word for a noun rather than a verb. A shockingly long list of slang terms popped up. (Puns intentional.)
I'm warming up to the new computer. Gizmo has started to eye it with suspicion. (And yes, I chose the title for this post on purpose.)