Look That Up In Your Funk & Wagnalls

Funk & Wagnalls, huh? A couple of years ago, my older great-granddaughter and I were disagreeing about the words to a song and I muttered, "Well, look THAT up in your Funk & Wagnalls!" She ran off screeching, "MOMMEEE, MEEMAW SAID A BAD WORRRRRD!!!"

My granddaughter came in laughing and said, "OK, what word did you use?" I told her what I had said and the little one started in on me again for the "bad word". I had to explain what Funk & Wagnalls meant and she still didn't understand. I'm not sure she had ever seen a dictionary at that point. I've stayed away from mentioning Funk & Wagnalls since. To be honest, I don't get much chance to mention it.
 

I actually had a set of Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedias! The local supermarket in my area at that time was offering the different volumes, weekly and usually one at a time, for around $2.49 with a specified amount of store purchases.

It wasn’t exactly the best encyclopedia, certainly not on par with the Encyclopedia Britannica or World Book Encyclopedia. Physical encyclopedias were soon to become dinosaurs, and outdated old ones, occupying shelves or entire bookcases, couldn’t be given away… 🤔

Benighted students of my day would often trudge to the library and thumb through encyclopedia volumes to get starting information for research papers, however. That was back when computers were science fiction …📖

“Encyclopedia salesmen” used to be a thing, making home visits to try and persuade parents to invest in a set for their kids which cost hundreds to around a thousand dollars…a princely sum in those days! 💰

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