🚀 go-pugleaf

chocolatemalt wrote:
> I won't be the one to say many negative things about the OED

> But as the "authority" for the current spoken language, to the exclusion 
> of Merriam-Webster?  Or whatever general usage you hear on the street, 
> or read on the net?  Remember that dictionaries are supposed to be 
> determined (however imperfectly) by the spoken language, not vice-versa.
> 
> Consider as a silly (but real) example the following:  Homer Simpson's 
> "D'oh!", introduced in 1987 when The Simpsons came around, and in common 
> use among the younger and college-age crowd by the early 90's, was 
> finally incorporated into the OED in 2001.  Does that mean all those 
> people saying "d'oh!" were wrong, until one day they were suddenly 
> right, their rightness being flipped on like a light switch on the exact 
> date of the new OED publication?  

I tend to agree, but I have one additional comment.  I think dictionaries
are simultaneously both descriptive *and* prescriptive.  They do not make
the rules, and they don't determine what new words are introduced and so
forth.  They describe what the language contains and what is considered
correct and proper at the time they are published.  But at the same time,
they do serve to moderate the chaos somewhat.  They only include words
when a good case can be made for inclusion.  There are trendy words that
don't ever get included.  And they also serve to cement and standardize
common practice.

So, I think it works both ways.  You can point at a dictionary (or, better,
at a consensus or at least majority opinion among several dictionaries)
and at least say, "at one time, this was considered to be right, and this
other thing was considered to be wrong".  It doesn't prevent language from
changing and opinions of what's right from changing, but it does sort of
give people something to standardize on and thus hopefully cut down on
the arbitrary and pointless variation rather than the evolution of the
language that serves a purpose.  (For example, having the word "acronym"
with a very narrow meaning presents difficulties because there are lots
of things which could almost be acronyms but which we don't have another
word for, so broadening the definition of "acronym" could be a useful
change.  On the other hand, IMHO, "lite" as a replacement for "light"
doesn't have much to recommend it and is mostly just a stupid variation
introduced for marketing purposes that doesn't improve upon the original.)

   - Logan