The Dictionary of Lost Words

“When I asked him what fashionable meant, he said it was something that mattered a lot to some and not at all to others, and it could be applied to everything from hats to wallpaper to the time you arrived at a party.”

Whenever Esme asks Harry what words mean, he gives her not only the denotation—the strict definition—but the connotation and values behind the word. Here, he supplies the idea that being fashionable is important for only some social strata, showing Esme that words aren’t as rigid as a dictionary might make them sound.

“New words, but they made Da feel uncomfortable. For the first time in my life I felt unsure about my questions. We fell into a rare silence, with catamenia and menstruation hanging meaningless in the air.”

As Esme gets her period, the new words that express her physical condition are hard to share with her father, and their relationships develops an unusual awkwardness. For the first time, Esme sees how even the best-meaning men of her time react to words about women’s bodies.

“I’d been forbidden to touch them, and now I was given the role of protector. I wanted to tell someone. If anyone had been in the garden just then, I would have found a way to show them the slips, to say that Dr. Murray had entrusted them to me.”

In a turning point in Esme’s life, Dr. Murray and her father agree to leave Esme’s childhood transgressions in the past, but her new responsibilities could be taken away at any time. Esme learns that the opinion of others is dependent on the choices she makes.

“Dr. Murray’s rage came back to me then and I felt mine rising to meet it. It should not be, this word, I thought. It shouldn’t exist. Its meaning should be obscure and unthinkable. It should be a relic, and yet it was as easily understood now as at any time in history.”

Esme’s exploration of which words are considered relevant and which are not form the basis for the novel. While recording her Women’s Words, she attempts to take an objective and scholarly stance on contentious language; however, that objectivity is hard to come by. Here, Esme brings her own values and cultural prejudices to her study of words.

“All words are not equal (and as I write this, I think I see your concern more clearly: if the words of one group are considered worthier of preservation that’s those of another … well, you have given me pause for thought).

As Ditte considers Esme’s concerns regarding the words approved for the Dictionary, she does her best to be academic and objective, presenting the facts and then reflecting on why those facts exist and where they came from—thereby clearly and succinctly summarizing the primary theme of the novel.

“From then on I did not feel superfluous, and the task of sorting slips took on a new challenge. Da would inform me whenever one of my suggestions made it into a fascicle. The proportion increased with my confidence, and I kept a tally on the inside of my desk: a little notch for every meaning penned and accepted. As the years passed, the inside of my desk became pitted with small achievements.”

“Superfluous” is a word Esme takes great delight in learning and using in conversation. Before, readers could see that she was deliberately and self-consciously inserting the word; here, however, she has internalized this word and so uses it without premeditated effort. It flows naturally and fits the situation. The novel is interested in language learning and assimilation, showing the progress of a native speaker’s broadening her vocabulary.

“On other days, when Lizzie wasn’t with me, I’d visit certain smallholders who I knew had a way with words. They spoke with accents from far up north or the south-west corner of England. Some were Gypsy or travelling Irish, and they came and went.”

After a constrained upbringing, Esme broadens her horizons by getting to know Mabel and other vendors at the market. This moment illustrates the Relationship between Language and Community—“English” includes language from various social classes and encompasses dialects that Esme has never considered before.

“‘I find that the more I define, the less I know. I spend my days trying to understand how words were used by men long dead, in order to draft a meaning that will suffice not just for our times but for the future.’”

As one of the book’s most sympathetic characters, Harry is more broad-minded than some of the other men. In this moment he recognizes a fundamental problem: The Dictionary is a static way of trying to share a dynamic language. 

“Things are changing. Women don’t have to live lives determined by others. They have choices, and I choose not to live the rest of my days doing as I’m told and worrying about what people will think. That’s no life at all.”

When Esme stands up for her new beliefs, she overlooks the difference in status and privilege between Lizzie and herself, focusing only on the two reference points the suffrage movement highlights: men and women. Here, the novel makes it clear how easy it is to oversimplify in the pursuit of ideals.

“He’d given me something I’d wanted since the first time he took my hand. It wasn’t love; nothing like it. It was knowledge.”

Despite her youth and relative lack of self-awareness, Esme has the insight to separate sex and love, identifying her relationship with Bill as being akin to the hunger she feels for learning of new ideas of all kinds.

“I used to think it was the other way round, that the misshapen words of the past were clumsy drafts of what they would become; that the words formed on our tongues, in our time, were complete and true. But I was realising that, in fact, everything that comes after that first utterance is a corruption.”

After the birth of her daughter, Esme suffers from postnatal depression. The depth of her feelings seems too much for words—a motif the novel refers to often, when characters are in extremis. To Esme, words no longer have the potential to overcome their initial existence as “clumsy drafts,” reaching some kind apotheosis of “complete and true” meaning. Instead, they now seem like permanent “corruptions,” never fully capable of expressing the inner life of a person.

“I caught myself wondering why Mrs. Lloyd never stood to lend a hand—I had plenty of time to ponder, as my reserve had deflected all polite attempts at inclusion. I rejected all the obvious reasons: rudeness, laziness, fatigue from tending her own hearth and four boys. In the end, I decided it was kindness.”

Esme is confused about Mrs. Lloyd’s seeming ungenerosity, particularly in a society where helping others is valued. Upon reflection, she discovers a new facet of Lizzie’s character that she hadn’t considered before—an inherent need to take care of others and be needed. It is a testament to Mrs. Lloyd’s keen understanding of her new friend that she recognizes and respects this need.

“But something had shifted. Lizzie was different, or perhaps it was just that now I saw her differently, as a woman who existed beyond my need for her.”

Esme takes her one-sided relationship with Lizzie for granted for most of the novel, never considering whether Lizzie’s potential has been squandered in service. However, here she recognizes Lizzie as a woman with her own needs and agency. Ironically, even Lizzie small character arc is actually in service of Esme—Lizzie’s new opportunities are presented as Esme’s inner growth.

“My Dictionary of Lost Words was no better than the grille in the Ladies’ Gallery in the House of Commons: it hid what should be seen and silenced what should be heard. When Mabel was gone and I was gone, the trunk would be no more than a coffin.”

Esme’s treasure box of words has been her most valued possession and lifeline throughout the story, but for it to make any real mark in the world, her collection cannot simply be a pile of paper slips. This is why the hard copy of Women’s Words will be such an important achievement in Esme’s life.

“I remembered all the times I’d searched the volumes and pigeon-holes for just the right word to explain what I was feeling, experiencing. So often, the words chosen by the men of the Dictionary had been inadequate.”

Esme grew up believing that the Scriptorium had all the answers to her questions. Now, she recognizes the limitations of the people who run it. Her quiet battle to have the words of less educated women included in scholarly research mirrors the suffragettes’ violent battle to have women included in political decision-making via the vote.

“Bondmaid. It came back to me then, and I realised that the words most often used to define us were words that described our function in relation to others.”

It is fitting that Esme’s political radicalization is word-based. Just as she has often had visceral reactions to words, so too she sees the profound sexism of her society in the way women are identified. The idea that words used by those who compose the Dictionary to refer to women are not the same as the words women use for themselves galls the budding feminist.

“Once the question of women’s political suffrage has been dealt with, less obvious inequalities will need to be exposed. Without realising it, you are already working for this cause. As grandfather said, it will be a long game.”

The novel often draws a parallel between the struggle for the women’s vote and the quieter push for giving women’s language importance. Here, Ditte illustrates that the battle for equality is more complex and multifaceted than it first appears, and that a variety of women and men are fighting for it in their own way.

“There was a space at the sorting table that no one filled. Perhaps it was out of respect for me, but from where I sat I saw the way Mr. Sweatman tucked in Da’s chair, and how often Mr. Maling looked in that direction with a query on his tongue.”

Esme and the others who work at the Scriptorium face an adjustment period after Harry’s death. Even after the initial grieving stage has passed, the reality of the loss takes longer to settle into their day-to-day lives. Here the author presents a realistic and nuanced portrait of the aftermath of tragedy.

“By virtue of education or connection, the lexicographers became officers, though their learning hardly equipped them to be leaders of men. Staff at the Press were from a broader spectrum—part of the fodder classes, Gareth said. He stopped telling me every time someone from the Press died.”

The effects of class divides continue to influence the Dictionary’s operations: Lexicographers’ economic background and education affects their operational role, rather than their leadership skills. This mirrors Esme’s knee-jerk prejudice against Gareth’s seemingly blue-collar work.

“‘Sorry for your loss, they say. And I want to know what they mean, because it’s not just my boys I’ve lost. I’ve lost my motherhood, my chance to be a grandmother. I’ve lost the easy conversation of neighbours and the comfort of family in my old age. Every day I wake to some new loss that I hadn’t thought of before, and I know that soon it will be my mind.”

This note, included on a word slip, highlights the surprising complexity of a seemingly common word. The insight recognizes the way the war is causing simple words to shift and grow in meaning, and highlights the central idea that words encompass more nuance than the ambitious Dictionary can hold.

“I thought about the shoebox in my desk and the trunk under Lizzie’s bed. My Dictionary of Lost Words. She was its custodian, I realised. And she’d wanted the words to be found.”

Throughout the novel, Esme and Lizzie are presented in juxtaposition: Esme wants to transform society to make the future better for women, while Lizzie clings to tradition and advises caution against radical change. However, this passage highlights the fact that Lizzie has played a part in the same process of political evolution.

“If war could change the nature of men, it would surely change the nature of words, I thought. But so much of the English language had already been set in type and printed. We were nearing the end.”

Like many who lived through WWI, Esme believes that its cataclysmic death toll and savage destruction heralds a kind of end of history and of language—no words can convey the depths of the horror. This feeling ushered in the formal and technical experimentation of the postwar Modernist movement, exemplified by the words of authors such as James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Gertrude Stein. The irony, of course, is that there is no “end” to the evolution of language. Still, war does have the power to change the meaning of words (as seen with “loss” above).

“Perhaps some things are not meant to be described—at least, not by the likes of me. A poet, perhaps, could arrange words in a way that creates the itch of fear or the heaviness of dread. They could make an enemy of mud and damp boots and raise your pulse just at the mention of them. A poet might be able to push this word or that to mean something more than what has been ordained by our Dictionary men.”

Gareth’s letter shows how words extend beyond what the Dictionary has captured. His allusion to a poet capable of “pushing” words to capture the experiences of young men in the trenches is a reference to the work of Wilfred Owen, whose searing poems about his time as a WWI soldier (most famously “Dulce et Decorum Est”) transformed how English people saw this period of history.