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For that you must turn to the unabridged O.E.D., where a 1903 citation from The Saturday Review establishes an enchantingly ornate context: “Maeterlinck is gradually enubilating himself from those enchanting mists in which first he strayed.” in question is Lenny? As for a more obscure word, like enubilate, it might have been made as clear as its meaning (“make clear”) by providing some appropriate examples. Bruce - “I was entrusted with the unromantic job of weeding” - even if the L.
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To what linguistic end?ĭoes it matter, for example, that the word entrust is entrusted with a quote from L. face.” There is no distinction in these examples other than the lexicographers’ desire to certify their broad representation of sources. But in what way does his quotation, “He could make no promises,” illuminate the evolution of the language or masterly use of the word promise? Similarly, the word smile is illustrated by a quotation from The Japan Times: “A smile creases his. Cohen, for example, turns out to be the writer Arthur Cohen. Lee, “Who are you gonna listen to, me or that mook?” But in that case, there is also too little information: Only cross-references lead the reader to guess that the word evolved out of a racial slur.Īnd while it may be fine, in the old O.E.D., to cite authors like Shakespeare or Tennyson by first initial and last name, once the floodgates are opened, undated identifications become bewildering.Ī. I like, for example, the Shorter’s definition for “mook” (“a stupid or incompetent person”) with an illustration from Mr. The Shorter dictionary has 1,300 new quotations from writers like Susan Faludi, Spike Lee, Isaac Bashevis Singer and Zadie Smith, and the editors emphasize their broad demographic intentions. (for obsolete).ĭiversity becomes a greater priority. And “ghetto blaster” should probably be marked obs. “Ghetto fabulous” is defined here as “pertaining to or favoring an ostentatious style of dress associated with the hip-hop subculture,” though its use now is broader and sometimes more ambiguous. “Generic,” for example, has given birth to a verb that makes even appendicitis seem attractive: “genericize.” Bureaucratic identifications make the cut, however local and obscure: “P45” is defined as a certificate given to an employee in Britain and Ireland “at the end of a period of employment, providing details of his or her tax code.”īut once description trumps prescription and currency eclipses timelessness, it becomes difficult to capture the slippery shifts in tone and fashion that accompany new words. Along with restless leg syndrome and flatline come more questionable entries, where use becomes the main criterion for inclusion. ($175, including a CD-ROM), with about 600,000 definitions, is a remarkable resource, but it also offers some glimpses of the issues being faced.įor included here are 2,500 new entries that treat language more as living menagerie than as natural history museum. The continually evolving third edition is being overseen by John Simpson and more than 70 lexicographers. The second supplement required four volumes and 29 years, and was completed in 1986 its changes were then folded into the original O.E.D., creating a 20-volume second edition in 1989 (available on a $295 CD-ROM). That dictionary, like this, its latest spinoff (“a byproduct or an incidental development from a larger project”), was created “on historical principles.” This means that it not only defined the words but also cited their earliest known uses, drawn from what the first volume of that first edition, published in 1888, called “all the great English writers of all ages.” The mother lode (“a principal or rich source”) is, of course, the great 1928 first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, which defined 414,000 words in 15,490 pages. Of that, this two-volume dictionary may be partly guilty, since it is partly plundered. They are “compiled,” a word that, according to the newly published Sixth Edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, comes from the Latin, compilare, meaning to plunder or plagiarize. Nor, for that matter, are dictionaries “written” anymore. A lexicographer, if any good, is hardly a drudge, and if bad, is hardly harmless. In his 1755 dictionary Samuel Johnson defined the lexicographer as “a writer of dictionaries a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words.” Unfortunately Johnson was uncharacteristically wrong.