The Liar's Dictionary

‘Honestly.’

‘Honestly. Ah, but here’s a nice one: “widge-wodge (v.). Informal – the alternating kneading of a cat’s paws upon wool, blankets, laps &c.” A sappy so-and-so, then.’

I did not like thinking of our obscure mountweazeler in that way. I preferred him as bent on chaos, disruption, as somebody thrilled and motivated by sneaking around and having the last laugh. If I let a more tender portrait of him emerge, I ran the risk of liking him. Him, her, it. Him. Let’s say him. Odds are.

I did not want to feel protective of him. I didn’t want to invest in that fact that many of the words showed small sweet observations, inconsequentialisms. As I flipped over the index cards I found myself hoping that nothing ever entirely terrible or perilous was being termed. I didn’t want that to be his remit, the world he was casting to define. It was fine if that meant his world was small. He didn’t have to make grand claims. I’m much more comfortable with people who just about manage the bare minimum.

We continued to pore and paw and pour over the index cards, seeking out the distinctive pen nib and any other clue. We swapped between who got to sit on the chair and who balanced on the window ledge every half-hour and compared how many mountweazels we each could find. I had slightly more than Pip because I was faster at spotting the distinctive penmanship, but she was quicker at checking online to see whether the words appeared anywhere else documented in the English language. Pip gnawed her lip as she read. Her dentist had told her that she ground her teeth as she slept – bruxism, she had repeated to me through gritted jaws that same evening with a flourish of distasteful new vocabulary. The dentist told her that if she kept grinding her teeth they would be eroded down to half their size. This had shocked an unconscious self-preservation response in her body: ever since then, she made sure to tuck her lips between her teeth and grind them together instead. Mouth as mangle and buffer.

‘Do you think David will be pleased with our haul?’ she asked.

‘Pleased he can winnow them out, sure.’ I arranged the most recently uncovered fictitious entries together, taking them out of alphabetical sequence.

skipsty (v.), the act of taking steps two at a time

prognostisumption (n.), belief, as made by glimpsing aspects of something from at a distance

pretermissial (adj.), the quality of being unbearable, particularly as pertains to silences

slivkovnion (n.), a daydream, briefly

‘Whoever jotted these down clearly had his mind in the Ss and the P

s,’ Pip said.

We went on sifting.

‘Quite an odd man, that boss of yours,’ Pip said after a while. ‘Don’t you think?’

I shushed her. ‘He’s just down the hall.’

‘It was interesting to put a face to a name this morning. I gave him a good once-over while he was eating his ice cream and waiting for the police to give the all-clear.’

‘What did you make of him?’

She shrugged. ‘I mean, I understand this is his passion. Life work. But trying to digitise all this – it’s not like Swansby’s is ever going to really replace the

OED or the Britannica, is it? I mean, Swansby’s is only known for not being finished. Having mistakes and being a bit eccentric.’

I agreed, but felt I owed the place some benefit of the doubt. ‘David has a line he likes to trot out about mistakes. Tell you what: I wrote it in my phone so I could quote it back at him if I made an error when helping him with the digitisation.’ I scrolled to find it. ‘Right. From Sohnson. That’s a typo. Here we go. Johnson: “Every other author may aspire to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach, and even this negative recompense has been yet granted to very few.”’

‘Snappy,’ Pip said, barely listening. ‘But that doesn’t excuse him putting you in the line of fire with those phone calls.’

‘There will always be someone looking to ruin everything,’ I said.

‘Not good enough,’ she countered. And I believed her I believed her I believed her.

I found another false definition about idling, dreaming:

alnascharaze (v.), to force oneself to fantasise

and then another, a touch more cynical:

Mammonsomniate (v.), to dream that money might make anything possible

Small little extracts revealed a state or state of mind. Briefer than an anecdote, more overworked than a passing thought.

‘What do you think about when you think about a dictionary?’ I had asked Pip on our first proper date. It was a clunky sentence. It was an evening of shynesses and clunky hopeful approaches.