Vocabulary Lesson

I learned a new word this week from a third-grader, although it’s doubtful whether history’s greatest lexicographer, James Murray, whose life work was editing the Oxford English Dictionary, could vouch for its etymology.

After reading a short story, Molly’s Pilgrim, in which a young girl in a new school is made uncomfortably aware of the physical, cultural, and linguistic differences between her and her classmates, I gave the children three reading comprehension questions. The first, “Why did Molly want to leave her new school?” elicited this from Alli: “Because she was discluded.”

“Discluded?” I asked, wanting to make sure I had deciphered her handwriting correctly.

Yes. Alli confirmed it.

“I didn’t know discluded was a word,” I told her.

It is, Alli insisted with an imperiousness that unmistakably said that she was now the teacher and I the student.

I wonder if that’s how Boswell and Johnson got started.