What's in a Word?

When I was a lad, I liked (and still like) to plunder a dictionary.

I used to think that the definitions given were somewhat akin to the words in the bible - statements of facts that were inviolable; Universal Truths with no shades of grey. It was a very Concise English Dictionary.

Later, of course, I found more expansive tomes, along with, of course, the possibility of more disagreement and argument because people thought, as I once did, that their 'map' was the territory.

It also allowed for a richer, more complex use of language, greater curiosity about other people's interpretations, more flexibility of expression, more subtely in communication...

Here's are some particularly interesting definitions of assimilate, all from the web:

the destruction of an Aboriginal Indigenous people by absorption into the mass of immigrant peoples, colloquially referred to as the melting pot.

The first meaning of assimilate in the dictionary is destruction of separate existence by digestion. Assimilation remained an explicit policy of the US Bureau of Indian Affairs into the 1970's, and continues as an implicit policy.

and a few more:

• absorb: take up mentally; "he absorbed the knowledge or beliefs of his tribe"
• become similar to one's environment; "Immigrants often want to assimilate quickly"
• make similar; "This country assimilates immigrants very quickly"
• take (gas, light or heat) into a solution
• become similar in sound; "The nasal assimilates to the following consonant"

By the way, if, like me, you enjoy browsing through dictionaries, you might not know that, if you type define: XXX [ define colon word ] into google, it comes up with definitions of what ever word you put instead of XXX
just for the hell of it, I just did XXX

if you omit the colon, you get XXX. 897,000 for assimilate