A Lesson in Vocabulary

As I continue my reading of Great Expectations, I notice that Dickens uses words that I am familiar with in unfamiliar ways.  This is obviously due to the19th century English language that he writes in.  Many words and certain definitions that may have been used in the 1800s have become obsolete in today's society.

It took me a bit longer than usual to get through the next set of pages because every time I came upon a word that I was unsure of, I would stop, write down the word, then put it into Google to see if I could find the definition.  I used context clues for some of the words but in order to confirm my thoughts, I would rely on the internet.  For example, here are some of the words and their uses in the novel:

Bolt - "I Bolted, myself, when I was your age...as a boy I've been among many Bolters; but I never see your Bolting equal yet, Pip, and its a mercy you ain't Bolted dead."

During this section of the story, Pip, his sister, and her husband are sitting down eating dinner. When I first read this paragraph, I assumed from my knowledge that they are eating that it had something to do with Pip and his food.  After Googling "bolt definition," I found that bolt also means "To eat (food) hurriedly and with little chewing; gulp."  Bolt made more sense to me in the story based on this other definition that I had never known.

Other words which I were unsure of were "file and whittles."  I had mentioned both in my previous post but went back to them today for this vocabulary discussion.  I had figured that when the criminal asked for a file from Pip, he was asking for something that would wear something away, like a nail file.  As for whittle, I had no clue what that could mean and I really didn't have any assumptions for it.  When I googled "What is a file and whittles in Great Expectations?" I found out that I was right about my definition of "file" but "whittles" actually meant: "Wittles is 'vittles' or 'victuals.' It means food."  The person who posted this answer said that he taught the book and his text has footnotes.  In order to confirm this, I checked another website which produced the same answer.

The last word I found strange was "interlocutor."  Here is the sentence: "I was in mortal terror of my interlocutor with the iron leg."  Based on previous pages, I knew that Pip was referencing the criminal that he encountered in the first chapter.  However, I wanted to know Dickens' specific reason for calling him a "interlocutor," a word I had never heard before.  So when I googled the word, these are the definitions that came up:

From Dictionary.com

This made sense in several different ways.  Obviously the first definition makes sense because the criminal has a conversation with Pip.  The third one also makes sense because he interrogates him about where he lives and if anyone knows he's out.  Now, the second one--to me, this definition makes an interlocutor a middleman of sorts and the criminal acts like the middleman during his conversation to Pip when he tells him that if Pip does not bring him a file and whittles, then he will tell another man who is apparently waiting in the shadows to take out Pip's heart and liver.

My comprehension of the story became so much clearer after learning the definitions to these words.  It is essential to learn vocabulary in order to better understand a particular text or topic.