What the Dickens does "Closen" mean?
At one end of the bookcase behind my desk sits a copy of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. “Shorter” is something of a humble-brag, given it is made up of two huge volumes, each larger than any other dictionary I own, and called “Shorter” in comparison to the full OED which stretches to twenty volumes. It is wealth of definitions and entymology and is my ultimate last resort for exploring English vocabulary.
I bought it because my uncle, a keen Scrabble player, would disappear down to the local library to scan the copy held there and find obscure, high-scoring words to bring back for family matches. It would drive my aunt nuts when he would place a soredia, binately, or cowheel on the board. Arguments would ensue, then a standoff usually ending with my Uncle brassing it out and everyone eventually sceptically conceding because they couldn’t prove otherwise.
I decided to play him at his own game, saved up for my own copy and proudly brought it to the next family gathering. Unfortunately this backfired because all it meant was that the stand-offs didn’t occur as my uncle was able to prove his case with the edition sitting on the table in front of him. He still won.
And so the Scrabble rule in our family became: if it isn’t in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, you can’t play it. The dictionary remains the high watermark in my mind for words that are worth using.
I rarely get my copy off the shelf now because it is wedged behind my desk and retrieving it involves emptying the books next to it, shifting my desk and risking a crushed foot when it invariably slips out of my hand. Today I felt compelled to resort to a crushed foot because I was browsing a UK news site, Sky News and came across the following headline:
Japan concerned over closening Russian-Chinese military ties
That word, closening threw me for a moment. My brain did a half flip, it made sense, but seemed strange.
Lazily I searched Bing, because I had a tab open in my browser. The AI disagreed with my search, insisting I didn’t know what word I was typing and I actually meant closer. Thanks Bing.
I worked my way down my book case, Chamber Pocket to Oxford Concise to Collins Dictionary (where I got detoured through the names of medieval saints - Collins is great like that, not just vocabulary but Twitter length bios as a bonus). No trace of Closening in any of these.
And so to furniture removal, librarianship and crushed toes. Scouring the joyful definitions of “Shorter” could I find the term? Nope.
sigh
Finally good old fashioned Google search took me to Merriam-Webster which provided the following ddefinition:
- closen
- verb
- clos·en ˈklōsᵊn
- closened; closened; closening ˈklōs(ᵊ)niŋ ; closens
- transitive verb
to make close
- intransitive verb
to become close or more close
- the closening bonds between two countries
Is this, therefore an American English word?
Now there is an interesting point of view regarding Merriam-Webster. Webster first published his dictionary in 1806, and Merriam first published their version of it in 1847. When was the Oxford English Dictionary first published? Not until 1884, and that volume only contained words beginning with A. Nevertheless, it became the gold standard for British English, expanding to the full 20 volume version. The shorter version should be enough to dictate language use for British journalists.
I tried to find a style guide for Sky News. There is an Editorial Guide, but this is all about fairness, anti-corruption ans such like. The Guardian has a style guide. Nothing on Closening there. There is a caveat that if it isn’t in the style guide then refer to Collins. Well I have checked Collins and cannot find anything on Closening. It does have close-in, close-out and close with, but I digress.
I suppose that, giving the benefit of the doubt, and the pedigree of Webster’s definitions, closen and closening can probably be tolerated, even if it is blurring the lines between American and British English on a UK news site.
Even so, I am not going to use it in Scrabble. Well, probably not.