A school friend whose birthday is in July said that in her family, if they asked how to spell a word, her father would tell them to look in the dictionary. They didn't think that solved the problem. They liked to point out the contradiction involved in trying to look up a word that they didn't know how to spell in the first place.

It's not an unusual complaint. Browsing in a dictionary can lead to interesting side trips, but sometimes we'd rather save ourselves the trouble of searching. We'd just like a quick, accurate answer.

So, I thought my friend would enjoy the heading I saw on an online dictionary site. It said, "Now look up words even if you can't spell them!"

I assumed that the online search was based on the fundamentals of sounding out a word and checking for entries with letters that represent those sounds. Teachers have often explained this procedure, of course, but if we'd rather not think that much, or if it's too much work to reach for a book and turn pages, we might have extra energy left over to argue that the computerized searches are faster, more accurate and more thorough than a manual search of dictionary material, especially since a person might not think of some of the more exotic spelling possibilities for any given set of sounds.

Just for fun, I decided to try an unlikely but phonetically plausible spelling featured in a grade school workbook. A character named Dr. Spello (or perhaps his name was spelled more like Jell-O) added interest to the educational aspects of the material, and one simple example has stayed with me. I typed ghoti in the search field, and, sure enough, the list of suggested words that appeared on the screen began with Fish (and fish was the fourth choice). I was delighted. The computer program passed my test. If ghoti looks to you more like an aberrant spelling for a kind of beard, just think of how gh sounds in enough and tough. The ti sound isn't so hard to figure out either, since many words end in tion. (I'll leave it to you to find an example where o sounds like i.)

The online dictionary also identified the word psychology from a phonetic approximation, but, like me, it didn’t have the answer for a personal puzzle from first or second grade. I needed a correct spelling for "haf," in a sentence such as, "We ‘haf’ to go to school." I knew the words half and have, but I didn't think either one fit. I finally asked the teacher.

Although online dictionary sources are always available, and word-processing software typically includes a spell-checker, I decided a few months ago to get a new dictionary in book form. It may be the first comprehensive dictionary I've ever selected myself. The volume I've been using at home was a gift, and it dates from a generation ago. The year 2000 looked like an appropriate time for an update.

My initial choice, a compact edition, was not the best. Within a couple of days I'd tried to look up several words that weren't in the new dictionary. I got a bigger one, with more than 163,000 entries instead of 58,000.

Perhaps a printed dictionary is or will be an anachronism in a world where information is commonly displayed on screens. In that case, maybe I'll have a valuable antique someday, but I also enjoy the book now.

For me, it symbolizes continuity in a society that specializes in obsolescence. When office workers sometimes spend months developing proficiency in new software, only to have it discarded because a newer program becomes available, it's reassuring that the American language isn't completely replaced every few years. Yes, there are changes and additions, but we continue to build on the existing set of words.

As Noah Webster envisioned when he spent more than 25 years preparing the first comprehensive dictionary of American English, the wealth of information we share in dictionaries can connect us with everyone else who uses the words, no matter how we look them up.

[Mary Krallmann]