Rather strange question to me since I love them. I was advertising the ease-of-use these knowledgable tomes offer to a friend of mine using some very convincing facts like (a) You can see the meaning of whatever word you want in a good dictionary (b) People who write these dictionaries tolerate pains in their [insert body parts here] to see that these words are alphabetically arranged for you and other such sensible things. I then also told him that there are computer dictionaries which spare him the pain of flipping through pages. I then showed him a dictionary that I had in my laptop. He was starting to show signs of interest and I beamed just as a Sales Executive does when he sees his prospective customer reach for his cheque-book. Sometime later, he wanted to try out a word or two on the program and started in earnest by typing the word "possum" to look at its meaning. Out popped the meaning pronto:
Possum (n). Nocturnal arboreal marsupial having a naked prehensile tail found from southern North America to northern South America
Well. Anybody there could have seen that he welcomed the idea of using a dictionary with the same level of enthusiasm as did the people from the Orthodox Church when they heard Galileo proclaim that the Earth revolved around the Sun and not vice-versa. As for me, I just gave a shrug and a wry smile saying, "Happens".
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