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He brought a dictionary and thesaurus, studied their work and began writing three or four drafts of a story before turning it in.

That led Dr. Markel to propose — after consulting a dictionary and thesaurus — what he called “protective sequestration,” like keeping military personnel in mass isolation on docked ships.

A spokeswoman for OUP said the company had finished reviewing the dictionary and thesaurus entries for terms for women and girls, and that changes, including more labels that show certain terms are offensive or dated, would be “visible across various platforms in the next few weeks”.

However, she says, there is a difference between a dictionary used as a scholarly reference – the OED being the prime example – and a casual dictionary and thesaurus installed as a default on your phone or laptop, or the ones used by Google.

The long afternoons she spent browsing through dictionary and thesaurus made for constructions that were inept, but hauntingly so: the coins a villain concealed in his pocket were “esoteric,” a hoodlum caught stealing a car wept in “shameless auto-exculpation,” the heroine on her thoroughbred stallion made a “cursory” journey through the night, the king’s furrowed brow was the “hieroglyph” of his displeasure.