BCC Composition II
Professor Kratz
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED)
Words not only have denotative (literal) meanings and connotative (associative)
meanings, but also histories. The meanings and associations that a word has change over
time. The OED is an important resource because it provides information about the origins
of words (their etymologies and the dates they were first used), as well as the meanings
words had at different points in their history.
The dates during which a definition was current appear after each definition as a
number—the number of the century (i.e. 17 means the seventeenth century)—coupled
with an E, M, or L—meaning early, middle, or late respectively. OE, ME, or LE refers to
the early, middle, or late English Periods (i.e. middle ages).
Below is a poem by nineteenth-century poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The words
in any poem’s title are important, and this poem’s title—“Aftermath”—is especially
problematic. Read the poem, and decide which of the OED definitions included below is
appropriate to the poem. Why? How did the OED’s definition impact your reading of the
poem?
Aftermath
BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
When the summer fields are mown,
When the birds are fledged and flown,
And the dry leaves strew the path;
With the falling of the snow,
With the cawing of the crow,
Once again the fields we mow
And gather in the aftermath.
Not the sweet, new grass with flowers
Is this harvesting of ours;
Not the upland clover bloom;
But the rowen mixed with weeds,
Tangled tufts from marsh and meads,
Where the poppy drops its seeds
In the silence and the gloom.
Definitions:
mown-past participle of “mow”; fledged: to grow the feathers necessary for flying;
strew: to be scattered over; rowen: the second crop of grass or hay in a season; meads:
meadows
Oxford English Dictionary Entry for “Aftermath”:
n. L15 [f. AFTER- + MATH n.1 Cf. LATTERMATH.] 1. A second or later mowing; a
crop of grass growing after mowing or harvest. Now dial. L15. 2. fig. An effect or
condition arising from an (esp. unpleasant) event. M19.