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The Merriam-Webster and Garfield Dictionary
Build vocabulary with the world's feistiest and funniest feline! Garfield and his friends make discovering new words tons of fun!
Nearly every spread presents an entertaining comic strip illustrating the featured word in use. Features over 65,000 meanings that are easy to understand. Great for all ages!
Nearly every spread presents an entertaining comic strip illustrating the featured word in use. Features over 65,000 meanings that are easy to understand. Great for all ages!
816 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 29, 2007
let me introduce you my best friend, reliable partner, my good fortune, my guardian angel, and possibly my soulmate: my merriam-webster's Garfield dictionary. I love you too much!
(I'm now engaged with this book, thank you)
(I'm now engaged with this book, thank you)
March 11, 2023
To speak of the Garfield Dictionary is to see into the soul of our society.
At once, the Garfield Dictionary shows that we do not live under a regime of capitalism known to the founding philosophers of such a system. We no longer live under an economic system where the money we use is exchanged as an equivalent of labor power. It is not just that we buy a bundle of carrots, for we elected not to labor in the growth of them--no! It is now that we buy things for the purpose of having them, and, absent their existence, we would not even conceive of such absurdities. Labor has been replaced by consumption itself, self-fulfilling and essentially recursive as it may be.
The Garfield Dictionary not only shows this starkly to the world: it shows the product of living in that world. Garfield is neither a beautifully decorated book or the $100 retro video game--he is a brand of himself, capable of being fit into any possible scenario under the sun, and sold to the public as such. He is the consumer product of consumer products, mass produced in physical and intellectual form, and enjoyed by everyone from the teacher who works in your elementary school to the grocer in the supermarket to the CEOs who sell his merchandise.
The consumer capitalism in which we reside is Garfield and Garfield is it. What better to show this than a Dictionary, the condensation of the English language of centuries past and present, conjoined to Garfield not as the teacher (not simply with Garfield), but as a specific Addition to the book--the Dictionary and Garfield.
But this is not all this book has to offer. It is not just an Historic artefact, a beautiful and horrible amalgam of us. It is a book that truly succeeds in making the Dictionary fun. Now, I personally think that all Dictionaries are rivetingly, enthrallingly, and magnetically interesting, but I am aware I am in the minority on this. The addition of comics--even if, one must admit, not always the best comics--and our furry friend adds a hint of pleasurable intrigue to what would ordinarily be densely and tightly printed words, in small type, in a thick book. This is especially the case for a child; with them, I must presume, the intrigue is far more potent than for an adult.
If I were to be critical, I think some of the words that Garfield highlights in the text are common words (like "defile") and, in that sense, the editors of this volume could have chosen more unique, more exotic, words to help teach the prospective language learner. This, however, is my only complaint.
One word of warning, however. This book is probably best for adults, or at least given to a child with adult supervision--or, indeed, given to an older child only. This is because the Garfield Dictionary is uncensored. Descriptions of brothels, the vagina, the penis, sexual acts (oral sex of both sexes, for example), and other typically adult subjects are strewn throughout this book, detailed in full if the viewer so chooses to read it.
At once, the Garfield Dictionary shows that we do not live under a regime of capitalism known to the founding philosophers of such a system. We no longer live under an economic system where the money we use is exchanged as an equivalent of labor power. It is not just that we buy a bundle of carrots, for we elected not to labor in the growth of them--no! It is now that we buy things for the purpose of having them, and, absent their existence, we would not even conceive of such absurdities. Labor has been replaced by consumption itself, self-fulfilling and essentially recursive as it may be.
The Garfield Dictionary not only shows this starkly to the world: it shows the product of living in that world. Garfield is neither a beautifully decorated book or the $100 retro video game--he is a brand of himself, capable of being fit into any possible scenario under the sun, and sold to the public as such. He is the consumer product of consumer products, mass produced in physical and intellectual form, and enjoyed by everyone from the teacher who works in your elementary school to the grocer in the supermarket to the CEOs who sell his merchandise.
The consumer capitalism in which we reside is Garfield and Garfield is it. What better to show this than a Dictionary, the condensation of the English language of centuries past and present, conjoined to Garfield not as the teacher (not simply with Garfield), but as a specific Addition to the book--the Dictionary and Garfield.
But this is not all this book has to offer. It is not just an Historic artefact, a beautiful and horrible amalgam of us. It is a book that truly succeeds in making the Dictionary fun. Now, I personally think that all Dictionaries are rivetingly, enthrallingly, and magnetically interesting, but I am aware I am in the minority on this. The addition of comics--even if, one must admit, not always the best comics--and our furry friend adds a hint of pleasurable intrigue to what would ordinarily be densely and tightly printed words, in small type, in a thick book. This is especially the case for a child; with them, I must presume, the intrigue is far more potent than for an adult.
If I were to be critical, I think some of the words that Garfield highlights in the text are common words (like "defile") and, in that sense, the editors of this volume could have chosen more unique, more exotic, words to help teach the prospective language learner. This, however, is my only complaint.
One word of warning, however. This book is probably best for adults, or at least given to a child with adult supervision--or, indeed, given to an older child only. This is because the Garfield Dictionary is uncensored. Descriptions of brothels, the vagina, the penis, sexual acts (oral sex of both sexes, for example), and other typically adult subjects are strewn throughout this book, detailed in full if the viewer so chooses to read it.
August 27, 2008
Ok, so it's kind of corny, but my husband has always liked Garfield so one year I got him this for Christmas. It has one or two comics on each page to correspond with definitions.
Reference material has never been more fun!
Reference material has never been more fun!
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews