"Dictionaries are always fun, but not always reassuring"
About this Quote
There is something deliciously sly about calling dictionaries "fun" before yanking the comfort blanket away. M. F. K. Fisher, a writer who treated appetite as philosophy and daily life as literature, knows exactly what she is doing here: puncturing the modern faith that if we can just name a thing precisely, we can control it. A dictionary promises order - one word, one meaning, a neat border around experience. Fisher lets us enjoy that promise for a beat, then reminds us that the border is imaginary.
The "fun" is real. Dictionaries invite browsing, the small intoxication of etymologies, the surprise of forgotten definitions. They flatter the reader into feeling competent, even worldly: look, you can locate the right word. But "not always reassuring" signals the darker pleasure of reference books: they tell you what you don't know, and worse, what you can't quite stabilize. Meanings shift. Connotations disagree. Some emotions have no adequate entry. Some realities - desire, hunger, grief, the complicated social rituals around food that Fisher wrote about so sharply - refuse to sit still long enough to be defined.
The subtext is quietly anti-authoritarian. The dictionary is an institution, a gatekeeper of "proper" language, and by extension "proper" thought. Fisher is too tactful to rant and too wry to surrender. She suggests that the act of looking up words can be playful, even liberating, while still exposing how language can fail us at the exact moment we want it to offer certainty.
The "fun" is real. Dictionaries invite browsing, the small intoxication of etymologies, the surprise of forgotten definitions. They flatter the reader into feeling competent, even worldly: look, you can locate the right word. But "not always reassuring" signals the darker pleasure of reference books: they tell you what you don't know, and worse, what you can't quite stabilize. Meanings shift. Connotations disagree. Some emotions have no adequate entry. Some realities - desire, hunger, grief, the complicated social rituals around food that Fisher wrote about so sharply - refuse to sit still long enough to be defined.
The subtext is quietly anti-authoritarian. The dictionary is an institution, a gatekeeper of "proper" language, and by extension "proper" thought. Fisher is too tactful to rant and too wry to surrender. She suggests that the act of looking up words can be playful, even liberating, while still exposing how language can fail us at the exact moment we want it to offer certainty.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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