1 : a reference source in print or electronic form containing words usually alphabetically arranged along with information about their forms, pronunciations, functions, etymologies, meanings, and syntactical and idiomatic uses.
You'd think a dictionary would be a bit more precise, wouldn't you? For instance, who chooses the words, and how are they selected? And thus, I introduce the purpose of today's posting.
I'm hoping this will assist any of my 11 readers (bless you!) who may have found yourself in the heat of a dinner table "discussion" on spelling, usage, or even the right of a collection of letters to exist as a word at all that has escalated to the point where Condoleezza Rice is on her way in Air Force One Person At A Time, And Speak Nicely! These conversations always seem to end up in someone (usually the dude who owns the book) raising hairy eyebrows and declaring archly, "Well! We'll just look that up in THE DICTIONARY!
News flash: Even the venerated Oxford English Dictionary is just an opinionated snapshot of the state of the language at the time it was published. In fact, because writing a new hard-copy dictionary is such a huge and time-consuming undertaking, by the time a new one hits the shelves, it's already out of date. Dictionaries are time-constrained "consensus" documents: they count and report the most commonly used spelling and usage conventions. If the lexicographers can locate roughly 15 citations of any word in published material, that word becomes eligible for inclusion in the dictionary. And words that initially show up with the disdainful "slang" tag in brackets eventually lose the linguistic smudge on the nose and become respectable.
Not that it's going to put the "fun" back in to any seriously dys-fun-ctional families or rescue the weaker linguistic arm wrestlers among us from serious noodle-lashings over the dinner table, but take it from me for what it's worth: if you are actually "right" in the argument over whether or not "irregardless" is a word (as DUMB a word as it might be, right up there with "inflammable"), temper your enthusiasm and put down the noodles. You are only correct, if at all, for as long as it takes the English-speaking culture around you to decide otherwise.
"Crunk," anyone, for dessert?
Hmmm, got any Britishers on your blog ? Or worse yet, someone from a former British colony or commonwealth? For I am sure they would make this argument nil with a short two-liner: "The Queen's English IS English. Everything else is just slang."
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