>>suctio+l9
Before folks vote up this facile, misguided criticism, at least read the referenced essay https://jsomers.net/mcphee-draft-no-4.pdf

The whole point of published writing is to put enough effort into one-to-many communication to be clear, concise, and expressive. Finding the right words (not the fanciest or rarest words) helps writing to better transmit intention from author to reader.

Careful revision and editing should be celebrated as expressing appreciation for readers, not sneered at as inauthentic.

>>cosmoj+(OP)
The dictionaries the author starts with seem to be the concise dictionaries which are intended to be that way. I don't blame him since the full dictionaries (e.g. OED) are hidden behind paywalls but the full dictionaries are really, really good. The entry for "flash" in the OED for example contains literary examples of the kind the author seems to want, like "red the gaze that flashes desolation". The OED also includes several senses of the word and its etymology.

The OED costs $100/year for US residents or £100/year for everyone else [0] but you can often get access through a library. The San Francisco Public Library has a proxy you can use if you have a library card there [1].

[0]: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/oxford-english-dicti...

[1]: http://www.oed.com.ezproxy.sfpl.org

>>suctio+cb
There is a difference between active and passive vocabulary though. Just because you can't think of a word right now, doesn't mean that you and your readers wouldn't easily understand it.

That being said, for anything that you want to be sure your readers understand, "write like you talk". http://www.paulgraham.com/talk.html

>>cosmoj+(OP)
I was given a copy of Chambers Dictionary[0] by my sister for my 18th birthday, I still have it. According to wiki, it is "widely used by British crossword solvers and setters, and by Scrabble players[..] It contains many more dialectal, archaic, unconventional and eccentric words than its rivals, and is noted for its occasional wryly humorous definitions".

I've always loved its definition of "éclair":

> "a cake, long in shape but short in duration"

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chambers_Dictionary

>>suctio+l9
> I know these writers, and how they "write" - it's painful to read and oozes pretentiousness.

Are you thinking, perhaps, of Mark Twain? I've never heard anyone say he was "painful to read" or "oozes pretentiousness"; you could be the first. Yet it was Twain who wrote, "the difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—’tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning," which is what this "draft #4" business is all about. (He stole the phrasing from a friend of his, but the sentiment was his own, in a letter in 01888 to George Bainton: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2019/09/02/lightning/)

>>lopis+Qe
The thing about translations is that they’re not written by the author. You can translate something and convey the same approximate meaning, but it will always be an approximation, sometimes reduced, of the original intent of the writing.

Sometimes you just can’t translate feelings well, even if an apparent direct translation exists. Swear words are a glaring example. You can translate motherf* either word for word or with a similar swear word, but it either won’t feel native or it won’t have the same connotation.

English itself is fine. I recently read “The Gradual Extinction of Softness” [1] and I was unable to translate it into my language and maintain the same feeling.

1: https://hippocampusmagazine.com/2021/11/the-gradual-extincti...

>>cosmoj+(OP)
For anyone trying to install Websters' Dictionary on a modern mac, downloading it from https://github.com/mortenjust/webster-mac worked for me.

>>cosmoj+(OP)
iOS version of 1913 Webster's: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/websters-1913/id1397172520

content and layout: http://www.websters1913.com/

>>stavro+gd
Language changes slowly but constantly: words evolve new sentences, new phrases are coined, others become less current. The OED is so big that the only practical way to revise it is continuously, a few entries at a time. Every quarter there are hundreds of changes: https://public.oed.com/updates/ . As with software, it turns out that financing a product that needs continuous updates is more effectively done with a subscription than by selling products as one-off transactions. (FWIW the print version of the 2nd edition OED is 20 volumes and is listed on the OED site at 860 quid.)

>>cosmoj+(OP)
And here's how to integrate Webster's into Emacs :)

http://mbork.pl/2017-01-14_I'm_now_using_the_right_dictionar...

Actually there's more than one way, of course. See the comments here:

https://irreal.org/blog/?p=6546

>>yesena+1t
Y10K proofing. It's a practice of the Long Now Foundation:

https://longnow.org/ideas/02013/12/31/long-now-years-five-di...

>>pdpi+Sb
"He has never been known to use a word that might cause the reader to check with a dictionary to see if it is properly used"

-- William Faulkner, of Ernest Hemmingway

"Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use."

-- Hemmingway, of Faulkner

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/01/26/dictionary/

>>phgn+dm
There's another option with better CSS up on the front page right now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29733648

Direct link: https://github.com/cmod/websters-1913

>>Aprech+N21
I just checked the copy of Websters Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) I loaded into a free app from the URL included in the article. "Condole", "condoled", "condolement", "condolence", "condoler", "condoling", "constrain", "constrainable", "constrained", "constrainedly", "constrainer", "constraining", "constraint", and "constraintive" are all present when searching for the root of both of those words. You can also search here:

https://www.websters1913.com/words/Condolence

https://www.websters1913.com/words/Constraint

>>cosmoj+(OP)
Past related threads:

You’re probably using the wrong dictionary (2014) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19763435 - April 2019 (87 comments)

Using the wrong dictionary - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7772557 - May 2014 (138 comments)

>>interf+ZX
That appears to be a 2007 copy of Websters? I'm looking for Chambers. Seems that there isn't an ebook of it, just phone apps.

Discovered that their 13th edition accidently left out ~500 words:

https://chambers.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Chambers-M...

>>cosmoj+(OP)
I thought this was such a good read that I created an online version of the 1913 dictionary.

It's available at https://webster.bordum.dk/ if anyone is interested.