The Liar's Dictionary

I am much obliged to Beverley McCulloch for her assistance in the OUP archives and to curator Davey Moor for helping me see Mountweazel-related exhibition images from the Monster Gallery in Dublin. In terms of the history of lexicography, two books I always kept close at hand were Jonathan Green’s Chasing the Sun: Dictionary-Makers and the Dictionaries They Made and Simon Winchester’s The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary. Fiction only knows and can tell the half of it.

Some elements of this book first appeared in small press publications and online journals: thanks, Jo and Sam Walton at Sad Press! Thanks Soma Ghosh at ‘The Demented Goddess’! Thanks Suze Olbrich at Somesuch Stories!

Thank you to all long-suffering friends for their zhushing and guidance (witting or otherwise). Specifically, thank you Špela Drnovšek Zorko, Prudence Bussey-Chamberlain, Nisha Ramayya, Matt Lomas, Timothy Thornton, Joanna Walsh, Robert Weedon, Copy Press, Oli Raglan & Jenny Selvakumaran & Rachel Lambert & Victoria Schindler, A & A & E & E & I & M & S & S & X, and the good people of Twitter who clarified words’ sillinesses and strangenesses. Thanks for your company.

Nell Stevens superlative, adj. and n.

To my family: thank you.

THIS IS JUST

THE BEGINNING

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This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

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Copyright © Eley Williams 2020

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Eley Williams has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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First published in Great Britain by William Heinemann in 2020

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781473562806