“It maintains a powerful conceptual edge throughout that successfully underpins its experimental project. Although the book’s primary audience is inevitably going to be the dictionary dreamers, outsider academics, hobo lexicographers, and steampunk language philosophers, the book also poses reasonable questions for more mainstream users of ‘definitions’ as well: after all, if a dictionary is not definitive, what is it? Approximate? Scholars would probably instantly point out that yes—a dictionary is exactly that: it is a usage guide, not an argument for a non-contradictory internal system of word meanings. Does it matter that, as Floyd points out, the definition of ‘parking lot’ in the dictionary might also apply to hotel lobbies and ‘the bottom of the ocean’?
Well, Floyd unpacks that for us as well.”
Fantastic review of Definition in Atticus Review, a fantastic literary journal. Thanks to Chris Lura for writing such a beautiful review.