The Statto Dictionary

The Statto Dictionary was created at great mental and financial expense once when we felt a bit bored.

When it was first released, on random bits of printed A4 paper, the Dictionary was widely criticised for being over-complex, pompous and daft. Thus, many copies were burnt. However, since these were the Corporation’s younger days, no objection was made so long as the arsonists bought the copy first.

	Summer 1998 The first ever edition, “The Statto & John Concise English Dictionary”, was a mere seven pages of hastily-scribbled A4, containing 22 definitions. It was this seemingly harmless event that brought the Statto-JTA Publishing Corporation into being, making the bus journey significantly less fun since we had no paper to throw at Dr Ehlers, whose fault the whole thing was anyway.
	September 1998 Still called “The Statto & John Concise English Dictionary”, now with the witty suffix “Advanced God Edition”, new definitions were being piled out as fast as we could think of them. Quantity, not quality, was the aim, and to this end, the dictionary proudly claimed to have ‘Over 33 entries!’, despite the fact that there were only 34.
	Summer 1999 The dictionary continued, undogged by criticisms of its growing unweildy (largely from Mrs K, who was annoyed that we kept on hogging the library printer), producing edition after edition with slowly more unpronouncable names. This eventually culminated with “HyperAdvanced Revised God EditionPlus (The ULTIMATE in Encyclopaedic Thesauri created from the Advanced God Edition, HyperAdvanced Revised Edition and the SuperConcise DictionaryPlus)”. With at least 123 entries (some of which are now lost), the Dictionary had served its time and purpose.

Probably quite content with the havoc it wreaked, blowing paper budgets throughout school in the short-term, and spawning two now-allied maniacs in the long-term, the poor Dictionary now lies in dusty filing cabinets, covered in muck, only being brought out for scanning in to websites.

There are a few simple instructions to would-be readers which were included with the first dictionary, and these are as relevant to the abridged copy now to be found online.

It is essential to remember at all times:
a) Which definition you are reading. This is due to the fact that you could interpret the definition as explaining how cricket falls off your foot.
b) Which book you are reading. This is not a novel or by Charles Dickens or set in a quaint little village on Guernsey or about some big nasty space mutants that try to turn all the English into Australians so they can eat all the strawberry flapjacks.
c) Which reality you're in. For a start, if you consist of positrons and antineutrons, then don't touch this because bits of you will disappear in a flash of gamma rays, but more importantly, the book will too. Another problem is that if you're four dimensional, you'll read three dimensions of this page, and the third dimension isn't all that interesting being very flat.
d) Never give up.

2nd August 2002 For the first time, the Dictionary has been published in electronic form; a specially abridged version designed exclusively for the Internet. Full copies can, of course, still be ordered for the cover price of £299.99 (or a negotiable fee) from Statto & JTA. E-mail them if you're interested. Click here to have a read.