academia · iii · amateur lexicographers
The society's business is the unrecorded word. Members write definitions for words that are not in the dictionary — words that are used by a single household, words that exist only in one trade, words that one person has been hearing in their own thoughts for years and has finally written down. Each member submits, in the course of a year, between three and twelve entries. The entries are not assembled into a dictionary; that is left to the lexicon, which is a different project altogether.
The society meets on the first Thursday of every other month, in a long narrow room above a printer's, where the floor is uneven and the kettle takes nineteen minutes. The meeting begins with the reading of three new entries, chosen by lot from the year's submissions. The reading is followed by an argument; the argument is followed by tea; the tea is followed by silence and the entering of the agreed definitions into the private catalogue. Members are encouraged to disagree, in writing, after the fact, and many do.
The society is sister to the marginalia society and, more distantly, to the noemic school; both share its tolerance for the small and the late. Several members have also kept a private diary of their own coinages, which is a different practice — quieter, less argumentative, and not the society's business.