I know, right? I mean just because it’s a recognizable word, you’d have to be crazy to think it might have its own entry in a dictionary.
It does come up in pop culture from time to time.
My kids took years to grasp the phrase “come what may” (they heard it in the song from Moulin Rouge. Some constructions just elude logic until you make the right connections.
“An education consists of learning where to look things up.” - a sibling of mine with more degrees than most people have shoes.
Google just the word next time, and let it lead you to the relevant phrases. In this case, “becoming boats” is not a connected phrase of any kind, just a noun and an adjective. I’m unsurprised it turned up nothing. But a quick Goog of just the word popped it right up, first box item, first line.
But yes, archaic usages can really throw you.
What’s funny (to me, anyway) is that I’m also in the middle of that book, and I read that very passage just last night! I saw the thread title and recognized the phrase immediately, kind of as a weird deja vu.
I was, however, previously familiar with this use of becoming, so I had no problem with it. (A more recent movie title: Death Becomes Her.)
(As an aside, I plan to start my own thread with a question I have about The Devil in the White City, but only after I’ve finished it. Stay tuned.)
Which all throws a new light on Jason Ironheart telling Talia he was “becoming.” I would have thought he was comely.
Okay, that’s an obscure one for B5/STTOS fanwankers…
I remember being a kid and hearing the phrase “every other”, trying to figure it out, and failing utterly.
Try right-clicking on the word “becoming” - right here.
On my computer the first menu item is Look up “becoming”. And the very first definition it offers is of the adjective form.
If you’re using an e-reader, it’s usually only a tap or two to get a dictionary definition. It’s the biggest advantage of e-books in my opinion.
What OS and/or browser are you using?
On the “not familiar with alternate meanings totally changing things” front -
I first encountered this couplet from Kipling’s Recessional, isolated from the rest of the poem:
Not having been raised in a religious household at all, I thought the rest of the poem must have been about hosting a dinner party and being afraid that they’d forget some sort of point of ettiquette.
I was…incorrect.
Wow. This is a staple on post-1900 Confederate and neo-Confederate memorials, and I blithely assumed it was from one of the Southern battle hymns. That it’s not, and that most of the memorials are intending it in a grievously wrong manner, is… enlightening.
Wow! I never knew you could do that! In Firefox it allows you to Google the highlighted word or phrase. Thanks!
StG
Ah, I missed the “highlighted” part. Yes, that’s very useful and I didn’t know it either.
He didn’t say Google, he said a dictionary. They’re printed on paper and have no electronic parts. Surely even in 2013 every house has a dictionary, right?
Not my house. I have a library card and the library has the OED online and any number of other dictionaries are available for free online. The only dictionaries I would consider buying would be specialist dictionaries such as one for slang or regional speech if I found myself looking for that information often and which are not readily available online.
I have to admit that it took me a few tries to parse that phrase.
A paper one? No. Google IS my dictionary. This is what I get when I do a search for “becoming definition.” Nice big box at the top with the dictionary entry.
Can you expand on this? I’m trying to come up with some sort of alternate meaning for “lest we forget” that isn’t a version of “those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it,” aka an indictment of hubris, but I’m failing.
I just tried it on the Mac in Safari, ctrl click. Thanks, indeed! Now to remember it…
BTW, and though a hero of mine, it took me a long time to learn it’s Olmsted and not Olmstead.
It tends to be included on Confederate memorials, especially the questionable ones scattered about the country by UDC and others, and in the context of other quotes and phrases seems to read much more as “lest we forget the valiant sacrifices of our soldiers, and their noble aims, and the terrible crushing of the South”… and other sentiments more neo than original Confederate.
Y['alls]MMV.
Safari on Mountain Lion. It uses the built-in dictionary. There’s a separate item to search Google.
Chrome for OS X has a “Look up in dictionary” item. Firefox has a Google search item but you have to highlight the word first.
Apparently, I was 44. Because, right now, I am 44.