Page 1 A - abadejo

My first page of dictionary memorising is a dull one. Five sixths of it is taken up with explaining different uses of the word "a". This is Spanish for "to" (and "at" and "onto" and "I bet" and various other things) and should therefore be considered our first "false friend". Spanish for "a" is "uno", and that's way over at the end of page 991, which we'll be seeing some time in 2013.

In common with many dictionaries, the Collins has numerous helpful examples of language in use. Much of this is your standard "I'm going to the park", "it's next to the cinema" "when did you arrive in London?" textbook examples. But shortly into the second column, things take a more sinister bent:

in the dark,
she knocked him to the ground,
they stabbed him to death.
it tastes of cheese.

Clearly, there is more to the Collins English-Spanish 6th edition than meets the eye.

I get excited towards the end of the second column. Yes, excited. I think I've found a mistake, on the very first page of Mr. Collins' dictionary. It says "ha ido a por agua a la fuente" (she's gone to get water from the fountain). That first "a" before the "por" strikes me as extraneous. I check. It isn't. This project is already starting to feel extraneous.

That's "a" done. We move on to various acronyms. AA, or Aerolíneas Argentinas, shares an acronym with A.A., Alcoholics Anonymous. Having flown with Aerolíneas, I trust alcoholics take this as an insult.

Finally we get to a proper word: abacá. This is Spanish for abaca. I'm glad I had my dictionary for that. Another name for abaca is Manilla hemp. Manilla hemp has nothing to do with hemp in the sense of fibre cultivated from cannabis plants.

One of the things I like about Spanish is that one word can mean several different things, or nothing, dpending on where you are in the Spanish-speaking world. So it is with abadejo, which the Collins claims is a kind of codfish, ling or swordfish, but could also be a Spanish fly, a dried salted cod or a kinglet. A kinglet is a little bird, but also the king of birds, because it once won a race against all the other birds of the bird kingdom by hiding in the plumage of an eagle. Wikipedia suggests that abadejo is also the plants Echinops ritro and Stinking goosefoot. I've just learnt that there is a plant called the stinking goosefoot. My faith in the usefulness of this project is well and truly vindicated.

I also learnt the word abacero, who works in an abacería. This means grocer and grocery store, respectively. It comes from the Arabic ṣaḥb azzád, which means "the man with all the stuff".