Wednesday, January 05, 2005

definitions

I have a 1935 edition of the Funk & Wagnalls dictionary that was my dad's.

 It was my dad's "old" dictionary and he gave it to me when I was a little kid and I still have it all dog-eared and cover fallen off till this day. Its got these thin onion skin pages and always seems to have the best definitions, the occasional precious illustration, and a little bit of prose when it helps explain a word. About 10 years ago I looked up the definition of House and I always thought that what I found was a great definition of House and Home:

 house, 1 haus; 2 hous, n. 1. A place of abode or shelter. 2. A building for human beings to live in; the building or part of a building occupied by one family or tenant; dwelling place. 3. Something regarded as a house; place that provides shelter, living space, etc. 4. Any place where something is thought of as living, resting, etc. See HOME.

 home, 1 hom; 2 hom. n. 1. One’s fixed place of abode; family residence. 2. A congenial abiding place. 3. In games, a goal. Home, from the Anglo-Saxon, denoting originally a dwelling, came to mean an endeared dwelling as the scene of domestic love and happy and cherished family life, a sense to which there is an increasing tendency to restrict the word - desirably so, since we have other words to denote the mere dwelling-place.

Home’s not merely four square walls,
 Tho with pictures hung and gilded;
 Home is where affection calls
 Where its shrine the heart has builded.

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