Member-only story
The Loneliest Book on Your Shelf
What Makes the Dictionary the Most Solipsistic Object in Literature
Do you sometimes realize something and immediately wonder why you never thought of this thing in the first place? The last time this happened to me was while listening to a podcast. The host came to speak about circular definitions.
Nothing too fancy about this, it’s generally admitted that circular definitions are not very useful in a debate. It got interesting when the host said something along those lines “even if ultimately, every dictionary ends up being circular”.
In other words, a dictionary (obviously) defines words with words it contains. Which means that dictionaries are the only books in the universe that are self sufficient. They don’t need other resources to manage themselves.
This is the moment I paused the podcast and asked myself why this never occurred to me. It’s the kind of knowledge that doesn’t even seem like one because of its obvious nature. But despite this, I still think that it’s weird that I have never thought of a dictionary as circular book by nature.
Locus Solus
A dictionary is a perfect circular and airless book. If one had to represent a dictionary on a flat line and link each reference with a half circle line…
