Conference thebay::joyoflex

Any one who accepts that interpretation of the role of a dictionary
has nothing to fear.  Ever since the publication of the Merriam-Webster
Third Unabridged, the *descriptive dictionary* has prevailed. Thus,
if enough people use "comprise" for "compose," such definition makes
its way into some next edition of a dictionary -- right next to the
definition of "comprise" that is given as "include."

There are those who think that's just fine, and those (of us) who
think that both the nature and rate of the change are the result
of the widespread influence of the communication media -- something
less than the "natural" change that occurred between Middle English
and Modern English.

Right oh, Bravo::Bennett!

  I feel that languages in our civilized world will change in manners never
seen before.  We could say that we get too caught up with the relevant subject
matters to teach our language to our children, but I think that this is just
the culmination of a trend towards complete literacy which will, as any
pendulum, swing in the other direction.  There were always two languages, that
which was spoken by the common people and that which was used for legal purposes
and by the learned of the day.  Then the commoners started to earn money and
were rising in social stature.  They felt that they should have the eloquent
language of the noblesse and the educated, so they wanted to be educated along
those lines, which caused the advent of popular grammarians, who then
slaughtered the English language.  Until that time the language readily
excepted double negatives ('no' negating the action with 'never,' 'nothing,' et
cetera, clarifying the negation, as we still see in Spanish) and many other
things that are nowadays considered the language of the uneducated in our
society.  The populated middle class readily changed their language in the
course of a generation and what is being said & used becomes the language.

  I believe that today people do not care so much about their education and
those that do care only about the fields that interest them, so they ignore
the importance of their language, thereby encouraging rapid decay.  When they
hear a word that they do not know, in a context which they can easily
misinterpret, they add this new word to their vocabulary and use it improperly,
so much so that it becomes accepted, even considered good English.  Exempli
gratia, I could have said:  "I believe that presently..."  which used to mean
soon, but because we understand the word present, we take it to mean at this
(present) time.  Language is dynamic, but it has never had the ability to be
so wide spread as it has today.  It is not wrong for a language to change, it
is just that the change is usually gradual, but it is not that way now.  We
can easily send our mistakes throughout the entire English-speaking world,
encouraging that change.

It is widely believed that every word has a correct meaning, that we learn these
meanings principally from teachers and grammarians (except that most of the time
we don't bother to, so that we ordinarily speak "sloppy English"), and that
dictionaries and grammars are the supreme authority in matters of meaning and
usage. Few people ask by what authority the writers of dictionaries and grammars
say what they say. I once got into a dispute with an Englishwoman over the
pronunciation of a word and offered to look it up in the dictionary. The
Englishwoman said firmly, "What for? I am English. I was born and brought up in
England. The way I speak *is* English." Such self-assurance about one's own
language is not uncommon among the English. In the United States, however,
anyone who is willing to quarrel with the dictionary is regarded as either
eccentric or mad. 

Let us see how dictionaries are made and how the editors arrive at definitions.
What follows applies, incidentally, only to those dictionary offices where
first-hand, original research goes on -- not those in which editors simply copy
existing dictionaries. The task of writing a dictionary begins with reading vast
amounts of the literature of the period or subject that the dictionary is to
cover. As the editors read, they copy on cards every interesting or rare word,
every unusual or peculiar occurrence of a common word, a large number of common
words in their ordinary uses, and also the sentences in which each of these
words appears, thus 

	+-------------------------------------------------------+
	|	pail                                            | 
	|	The dairy *pails* bring home increase of milk	|
	|				KEATS, Endymion		|
	|					I, 44-45        |
	+-------------------------------------------------------+

That is to say, the context of each word is collected, along with the word
itself. For a really big job of dictionary-writing, such as the Oxford English
Dictionary (usually bound in about twenty-five volumes), millions of cards are
collected, and the task of editing occupies decades. As the cards are collected,
they are alphabetized and sorted. When the sorting is completed, there will be
for each word anywhere from two to three to several hundred illustrative
quotations, each on its card. 

To define a word, then, the dictionary-editor places before him the stack of
cards illustrating that word; each of the cards represents an actual use of the
word by a writer of some literary or historical importance. He reads the cards
carefully, discards some, rereads the rest, and divides up the stack according
to what he thinks are the several senses of the word. Finally, he writes his
definitions, following the hard-and-fast rule that each definition *must* be
based on what the quotations in front of him reveal about the meaning of the
word. The editor cannot be influenced by what *he* thinks a given word *ought*
to mean. He must work according to the cards or not at all. 

The writing of a dictionary, therefore, is not a task of setting up
authoritative statements about the "true meanings" of words, but a task of
*recording*, to the best of one's ability, what various words have *meant* to
authors in the distant or immediate past. *The writer of a dictionary is a
historian, not a lawgiver*. If, for example, we had been writing a dictionary in
1890 or as late as 1919, we could have said that the word "broadcast" means "to
scatter" (seed for example), but we could not have decreed that from 1921 on,
the most common meaning of the word should become "to disseminate audible
messages, etc., by radio transmission." To regard the dictionary as an
"authority," therefore, is to credit the dictionary-writer with gifts of
prophesy which he nor anyone else possesses. In choosing our words when we speak
or write, we can be *guided* by the historical record afforded to us by the
dictionary, but we cannot be *bound* by it, because new situations, new
experiences, new inventions, new feelings are always compelling us to give new
uses to old words. Looking under a "hood," we should ordinarily have found, five
hundred years ago, a monk; today, we find a motorcar engine.(1) 

	(1) *Webster's Third New International Dictionary* lists the word
	    "hood" also as a shortened form of "hoodlum."

	       The time that elapsed between *Webster's Second Edition* (1934)
	    and the *Third* (1961) indicates the amount of reading and labor
	    entailed in the preparation of a really thorough dictionary of
	    a language as rapidly changing and as rich in vocabulary as English.


	    		--	S. I. Hayakawa,
	    			Language in Thought and Action, Fourth Edition.

In a less philosophical vein...

I plan to purchase an unabridged dictionary for our cost center.  
Can any of you give me any suggestions?  We are able to spend about 
fifty dollars, (so much for the OED... 8-) ) but I will consider 
a larger expense if a clear favorite presents itself.    

Please include as much specific information in your recommendations 
as possible; for example, several different publishers use the name 
"Webster's" and the same dictionary can have several different editions.
 
Thanks in advance for your help - 

Barbara  


editions  
  

I'm fond of the American Heritage.

	Jon

Re .5:

I don't know about American Heritage's dictionary of slang, but if it is of the
same quality as their dictionary of the English language, I would stay away
from it.  I recently bought their dictionary and found three errors in only a
few weeks:

	"Tesseract" is omitted.
	"Quaker" refers to "friend", meaning #n, but there are only
		n-1 meanings listed for "friend".
	In the geographic section, the population for Washington, D.C., is not
		given.

Given the number of times I've used the dictionary, this is a very high
percentage of errors.  Personally, I would not trust anything by American
Heritage.


				-- edp

I grew up with the American Heritage and am partial to it. Of course, nothing
beats the OED, and you could always become a Book-of-the-Month Club member
to get one.

I am unfamiliar with the AH dictionary of slang, but think that a dictionary
of slang is an oxymoron.

	Jon

Re. 6

I wouldn't go so far as to call those "errors."  Omissions, 
perhaps, but not errors.  Unless it is an unabridged dictionary, 
which I don't think the American Heritage claims to be (at least, 
neither of the two I own do), you might not find all the words you 
can think of.  And populations?  Your expectations may be too 
high . . . .

Mark

Re .8:

"Tesseract" might be called an omission, but I consider it common enough to be
in the dictionary.  It's in Webster's.

The reference given in the "Quaker" definition is clearly an error.  When the
reader is referred to another meaning, that meaning should be there.

The geographic section is supposed to give populations -- this is explicitly
indicated.  Populations for other cities are given.  Omitting the population
for Washington, D.C., is an error.



				-- edp

It appears that `common' is a subjective opinion.  I have never heard
of "tesseract", and neither has *my* Webster's. 

- chuck

Re .10:

I did say I consider "tesseract" to be common enough to be in a dictionary.
Doesn't that indicate subjectivity?  Besides, I've seen it twice recently --
once in the MATH notes file and once in the Omni quiz discussed in this file.

Forgetting about "tesseract" still leaves two errors in American Heritage's
dictionary.  That's pretty bad, considering it only took a few weeks to find
them -- I've had my Webster's for nine years, but I haven't found any errors
yet, other than omissions of words rarer than "tesseract".


				-- edp

My Webster's lacks "tesseract," too. Eric, your listing "Omni" as an authority
amuses me. I think that "Omni" is to science reporting as "Penthouse" is
to the arts.

	Jon

Re .12:

> Eric, your listing "Omni" as an authority amuses me. I think that "Omni" is to
> science reporting as "Penthouse" is to the arts.

I must say that I am getting increasingly irritated by people reading my notes
improperly, here and in other notes files.  It seems more and more people are
either ignoring what I say or creating statements I have not made.  If I just
entered random characters, I might accomplish the same effects.

I did not cite "Omni" as an authority.  Do you remember what a dictionary is?
It is a listing of the words used by users of a language, in this case English.
Omni uses English.  They used "tesseract".  I did not refer to Omni as a source
of reported information, I used it as an example.  It is a primary source, not
a secondary source.


				-- edp

I'm sorry, are we picking on you?

You took offense at my last essay where none was intended. When I wrote it, I
was not thinking of you in particular (actually, I was thinking of William
Safire). You happened to be on the side that I was arguing against, but, hell,
*I'm* often on the side I'm arguing against. I think you neither a dizzard
nor a skeezicks, but an intelligent and worthy adversary (which as you no
doubt know, are hard to find these days). If I thought you silly, I would
ignore you. The fact that I am spending my evenings discussing the burning
issues of the day when I could be competing with your one hundred books per
year indicates my high regard for your thoughts.

	Jon

"It's in my Webster's". 

The name "Webster" is in the public domain.  This means that ANYBODY can
publish a list of words and definitions and call it Webster's Dictionary. 
Only dictionaries published by the firm of Merriam-Webster are the real McCoy
(or should I say the real Webster?). Anything else is just a dictionary. 

For more on dictionaries in general, there is an article in the most recent
edition of "GAMES" magazine (I think the issue date is August). 

RE .10 -- Have you never read "A Wrinkle in Time" by Madeline L'Engle?  That
was my first (and, come to think of it, only) exposure to the word "tesseract."
Fortunately, it is explained in the story, so I didn't have to find out whether
my dictionary contained it...
								-- Nina

Re .16:

If it's the book I think it is, I probably read it many years ago.  It, too,
was probably my first exposure to the word "tesseract".


				-- edp

    Someone once said, "A dictionary is like an argument.  One word
    always leads to another."  I think this file will attest to that!

    And since no-one has bothered to mention what the word means, a
    tesseract is the four-dimensional version of a three-dimensional cube.

> < Note 41.13 by ALIEN::POSTPISCHIL >

> I must say that I am getting increasingly irritated by people reading my notes
> improperly, here and in other notes files.  It seems more and more people are
> either ignoring what I say or creating statements I have not made.  If I just
> entered random characters, I might accomplish the same effects.

	In 41.13, Mr Alien makes a number of claims concerning the American 
Heritage Dictionary which should not be taken seriously by anyone with a grain
of wit.

	(1) that the word "error" means exactly the same as the word "omission".
Nonsense: the two are completely distinct.   One *can* have errors of
commission or errors of commision omission.   Perhaps this confusion is the 
source of his error- I mean omission.

	(2) that Washington D.C. is a word, and therefore should appear in the
dictionary.   Piffle: words don't have spaces in the middle of them, Mr Alien. 
Washington D.C. is a sentence.

	(3) that the word "tesseract" does not appear in the dictionary.
Rubbish: it appears there- but in the fourth dimension.   (Ref 1: Kurt Vonnegut 
Breakfast of Champions).

	(4) that on looking up Quaker, one is directed to definition n of 
Friend.   Hamster droppings: the reference is to definition 9, not definition n.

	(5) that the word "tre" (definition: a common misspelling of the word
"tree") does not appear.   Beneath comment.

	(6) that the page numbers are not in alphabetical order.   Ditto.

	(7) finally, he alleges that the fountainhead of our philological 
culture, the flagship of our linguistic navy, the buckram of our semantic
sheepflock, the top duck-billed-platypus in our cruciverbal squadron of 
duck-billed-platypi, the American Heritage Dictionary, is composed entirely of
random characters.

At the very least I would recommend Mr Alien to proof-read his replies before
submitting them in future, to be sure he means what he is saying.

Andrew Buchanan  

    The hugely unreliable Buchanan asserts, in .20, that:
    
    >Washington D.C. is a sentence.    
    
    I challenge him to produce his verb.
    Anticipating his reply, I further challenge him to provide the present
    participle of "to D.C.".
    
    	Baffled of BISTRO::

>    The hugely unreliable Buchanan asserts, in .20, that:
>    >Washington D.C. is a sentence.    
>    I challenge him to produce his verb.
    	Baffled of BISTRO::

The verb in line 2 is "is"

>> < Note 41.22 by HERON::BUCHANAN "zut bleu!" >
>>                               -< Dear Baffled >-
>>
>> >    The hugely unreliable Buchanan asserts, in .20, that:
>> >    >Washington D.C. is a sentence.    
>> >    I challenge him to produce his verb.
>>    	Baffled of BISTRO::
>>
>> The verb in line 2 is "is"

  So you should have said:
    Washington D.C. is a sentence is a sentence.
    
    	Knowledgable of Nice  

    Re .21:
    
    > ................. I further challenge him to provide the present
    >participle of "to D.C.".
     
    Well, if he won't. :-)
    
    "D.C.ed,"
    
    As in going to the morgue to see the D.C.ed. ;-)
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.

    re: .24
    
    Sorry, that's the past participle.
    
    The present participle of D.C. is D.C.sing, as in,
    
    "Sorry, Anne, I can't go play ball with the guys today, my
    grandfather is busy D.C.sing."
    
    --bonnie

    Washington D.C. is a sentence......to any official sent to serve
    an unwanted term of office there.
    
    -Jody
    

If you don't mind a comment, I feel that over the last few replies, this
conversation is beginning to vertiginously disappear down what we French
people call "un trou de rat", over this Washington business.   The sentence:

"Washington D.C. is a sentence"

was selected for its decorative quality in its original context, from which
it should not be violently and wantonly extracted.   It was certainly not 
chosen for its truth value.

Indeed, if truth value were the object, then the well-known commutativity of
the eqivalence operator when applied to boolean arguments would allow us
to transform Mr Knowledgable's essay from its original implied bracketing:

(Washington D.C. is a sentence) is a sentence

to

Washington D.C. is (a sentence is a sentence)

or

Washington D.C. is true

or more simply:

Washington D.C.

I trust that this is helpful.

*

Incidentally, one point that I feel I made insufficiently clear in .20 is that
to many, criticism of the American Heritage Dictionary is tantamount to
criticism of the American Heritage itself.   Mr Alien is a bold man to express
such UnAmerican sentiment in an open Notesfile.

    Reply .13 was dated 1985.  Why is this topic being resurrected?
    I haven't seen a reply from him in so long, I'm not even sure .13's
    author reads the JOYOFLEX anymore.
    
    Spd

    Whatever, I'm glad the discussion was re-opened. Even though the
    subject was long dead, I was intrigued enough by Eric's assertions
    of error in the AHD that I pulled down my copy of the "New College
    Edition" (1979) and attempted to duplicate his research.
    
    He *is* correct that "tesseract" isn't listed. That is indeed a
    curiosity. On the other hand, I did already know that at least
    one common (to me) word wasn't listed in my edition: "segue".
    No matter; let us proceed.
    
    "Quaker". My edition gives no referral to the word "friend". It
    says "A member of the Society of Friends."
    
    "Washington, D.C." is meaning 2 under "Washington" (what meaning
    1 is I leave as an exercise for the reader). In this entry, it
    quite clearly gives a population figure of 757,000 for the city.
    
    Perhaps more recent editions than mine have changed the entries
    (certainly the population figure would have changed), or Eric
    has a substandard edition. There are various separate editions,
    from the unabridged edition down to the paperback *thing* that
    serves as the DSD (Digital Standard Dictionary), and the quality
    of each version differs from its siblings.
    
    --- jerry

    re: .29
    
    Nothing ever dies in JOYOFLEX.  
    
    Even though the jokes sometimes smell that way.
    
    --bonnie

Ooops, I should of course have spoken of equivalence being associative, not
commutative (which of course it is as well).   Still omission of an error is 
an error of omission, as Postpischil frequently reminds us.

Andrew Buchanan

         This whole business of spelling and grammar is in fact the 
result of joke (jest more likely) that went horribly wrong. Little more
than 200 years ago our houses were furnished with "chaires taybels and
stules" and nobody gave a damn about how to spell these words as long
as the result could be easilly understood. Few people could write and
those who could just knew how to represent what they heard as letters.
Everybody was happy. Along came a large gentleman with a clever plan
to make some money by putting all of these words into a book to save
people the trouble of thinking them up every time they needed them.
He described himself as a lechsycograffer and proposed the new book to
be called a dikshunerry. The plan was elegantly simple, to go out to
those people who could write, quote them a word, ask them to write it
down, collect the results and use the most common for the book. The
publisher was sold on the idea and work commenced.
	The 'problems' started at the very beginning inasmuch as the
only people who could write were hard to find. They were however 
eventually located in coffee houses (where people got very drunk) and
whorehouses (where people got very drunk and did other things too). It
was in this atmosphere that the survey proceeded. The first trial
survey was carried on something that everybody knew and the results
were something like "teybell taybul taybelle teybull taybool taybele
taybule tayboule taybull etc.". Now whether it was the general
distractions surrounding our lechsycographer, the NIH syndrome, the
difficulty of deciphering drunken handwriting or a simple case of
'I know best' you don't need an 8600 to tell you that the final result
is somewhat odd. In a way the plan had failed but once started had to
be carried through. The social aspects of the job had in any case
major attractions. In no time trips around the country, indeed abroad too,
were undertaken to study dialects etc. but no real research was done
and all the words were thought up in odd spare moments between 'research
sessions'. Who in any case was going to check?. To hide the sheer
fun involved from his publisher our lechsycographer was apt to 
describe the job as one of 'harmless drudgery'.After a while it all
became too easy and for the sheer delight of it many well known and
accepted conventions were replaced by totally meaningless arrangements.
One can almost hear the howls of laughter from the Blue Boar Inn as
"ph" was finally chosen to replace the much loved and understood "ff".
A new and totally useless letter was introduced "j" and the whole
excercise had become the most enormous wheeze. 
	Unfortunately the publisher wanted results and our hero
was forced to throw the whole thing together in a matter of no time.
To ensure that nobody would take it seriously the definitions for many
of the words were given witty asides. The tome was finally delivered
by our lexicographer and declared a dictionary. It was destined to
be forgotten for ever.
	People seemed to like the witty remarks however and rather a
lot of them were sold. The big problems occurred  when they got
into the hands of people who hadn't heard the story behind it. Since
basically it was all the product of one man certain patterns were
discovered and academics delighted in trying to make rules to define
the patterns. It mattered not that some rules had more exceptions than
true cases or that they could only be written negatively ie "never ...".
It was all the rage. In no time special silent letters were invented 
to space out the new words and more new words invented to describe the
new rules. To earn money the adherents to this new fangled system 
set about charging people for explanations. The old hands knew better
but foolishly allowed their gullible children to become indoctrinated.
In little more than a generation the new words and all their silly
rules had triumphed. Special research groups were set up to develop
extra awkward words for legal documents and the like and a particularly
insidious group who specialised in strange orders of long words in endless
sentences were used to create government forms etc. 
	Well I'm sure you know the rest. I've got to get back to
writing some Culleur Grafficks FFoftwere now.(Sorry that should be
Culler for those of you in the States)

	Befft Wiffhes

		Iohn Lincoln

   I have been meaning to go buy a new Dictionary, but was overwhelmed by the
   choices. I am used to the MacQuarie and Oxford. Can someone pass some
   comments on the respective pros and cons of the various "American"
   Dictionaries?
   
   q
   

    1.  The number of entries is phenomenal, and it includes plurals and
    various other forms.  However, they'd have you believe that words don't
    have very many meanings, a la 1984.  And they tend towards shortness.
    I don't recommend the Official Scrabble Players' Dictionary.
    
    2.  I recently bought the English-American, American-English dictionary,
    though I forgot its precise name.  It's the one with entries such as
    First Floor:  Second Floor.  I thought it was a book of jokes, but it
    isn't.  It's a real attempt to be serious.  And as a serious work, it's
    something of a failure.  It doesn't even have the word "suspect" in it.
    In English:   I suspect that this book will be helpful.
    In American:  I suspect that this book will be useless.