A company I used to work for had a technical editor who was a real language nerd. Anyway, he showed me a book that was published on a regular basis that contained words that were under consideration for being added to dictionaries. The language community would discuss and evaluate these words and eventually they might, or might not be in…
A company I used to work for had a technical editor who was a real language nerd. Anyway, he showed me a book that was published on a regular basis that contained words that were under consideration for being added to dictionaries. The language community would discuss and evaluate these words and eventually they might, or might not be included. Some of the criteria they used was whether the word was a “fad”, or if it had a fairly consistent use or definition. I find it interesting that this process of thoughtfully considering when to alter the official language has been tossed aside in the name of advancing political agendas.
Yes - there was an article in the Guardian (when it was still worth reading) a few years back about how the editors of the junior addition Mirriam-Webster dictionary had decided to drop words like acorn, magpie, buttercup, hedgehog, huckleberry - and replacing them with words such as broadband, chatroom, database - basically eliminating nature words from the dictionary - training little cyborgs to pay attention to their screens instead of the world around them.
The process you are describing is the descriptivist tradition of lexicography: basing definitions on usage. It's looking like, when it comes to politically loaded terms, it's being replaced with prescriptivism.
A company I used to work for had a technical editor who was a real language nerd. Anyway, he showed me a book that was published on a regular basis that contained words that were under consideration for being added to dictionaries. The language community would discuss and evaluate these words and eventually they might, or might not be included. Some of the criteria they used was whether the word was a “fad”, or if it had a fairly consistent use or definition. I find it interesting that this process of thoughtfully considering when to alter the official language has been tossed aside in the name of advancing political agendas.
Yes - there was an article in the Guardian (when it was still worth reading) a few years back about how the editors of the junior addition Mirriam-Webster dictionary had decided to drop words like acorn, magpie, buttercup, hedgehog, huckleberry - and replacing them with words such as broadband, chatroom, database - basically eliminating nature words from the dictionary - training little cyborgs to pay attention to their screens instead of the world around them.
Oh that is so depressing.
Tho it makes sense--I do have a Spanish/English dictionary from 1940s and so many of the words are WWII technical ones.
Wow!
along with every other part of civilised thought
The process you are describing is the descriptivist tradition of lexicography: basing definitions on usage. It's looking like, when it comes to politically loaded terms, it's being replaced with prescriptivism.