Don't Like A Definition? Try a Different Dictionary.

When writing one of my blogs, I often use online dictionaries and thesauruses to verify the meaning of a word or find a synonym.

I could get my butt out of my easy chair and go all the way to my second floor office where we keep our dictionary and thesaurus, but that is way to much work. Going online is far more easier.

I was writing a blog not long ago, where I used the word "memories." I wanted a synonym for the word, but didn't know one off the top of my head. I was experiencing a brain-fart.

So I looked up the word "memories" and found that the online dictionary I use has a fairly grim definition of what I've always considered a fairly innocuous word.

Memories is a "reminder of death" is how it defined the word.

Some of the synonyms listed included "death's-head," "reminder of human failure," "reminder of mortality," and "skull."

I didn't know "memories," was such a depressing word.

The definition given online was so depressing that I forced myself out of my chair and up to our second-floor office to double-check it against my ever-so-trusty 1971 edition of "The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language"

The book's definitions were much more pleasant.

None of the 10 definitions it listed were anywhere close to being as apocalyptic as the online dictionary.

For instance, one of the definitions in the book was:

"An act or instance of remembrance; a recollection: 'He fell into pleasant memories of his childhood.'"

That was much better.

The synonyms listed in my 1971 dictionary were also nowhere near as grim as the ones I found online.

They included "memory," "remembrance," "recollection," "reminiscence," and "retrospect." There wasn't any mention of "death's-heads" or "human failure."

Just reading the definition and synonyms from my American Heritage Dictionary immediately conjured up memories of stomping through freshly-raked piles of leaves as a rambunctious 4-year-old and playing T-ball on hot summer days and as a teenager floating down the Mississippi with my friend Jim on our home-built raft, trying to make it to Cairo where we could catch a steamship up the Ohio River and into the free states. Yes, those were the days.

You know, that's the funny thing about memories. Sometimes things you read or that you watch on TV morph into a memory that you would swear is true, that you had those experiences. It's actually just your mind playing tricks on you. It happens to me sometimes. For instance, I re-read that last paragraph, and realized that I never, ever played T-ball growing up.

Not once.