And this is what scared me about it. Little petty Webster and I woiuldnt care. But the Oxford Dictionary is the official dictionary of the language.
Originally posted by YNCS I'm glad L'Office de la Langue Française has no counterpart in English. English remains dynamic and growing because it is being changed by the people, not hobbled by a bureaucratic committee designed to keep the language chained down.
why do you guys find it so offencive that these words make it into the 'official' dictionary?
there are probably thousands of words in that dictionary that each of you doesnt know and will never know. what do you care if another word you'll never use is in some book that you rarely read?
No, it isn't. The Oxford English dictionary is done by upper-class twits with too much time on their hands. And for future reference anything with either Oxford, Eton or Cambridge in the title will get the same response from me. Just a little crash course in English class warfare for you.
Originally posted by ferenginar I don't think eccentric quite covers this one, try lunacy.
We Brits don't do lunacy. We do eccentric, miffed, drunk, polite with a tendency towards irritating and occasionally very drunk but we don't do lunacy.
Who determines which particular dictionary is the "official" dictionary? The official dictionary of French is put out by the French Academy (L'Academie Française), but there is (thank God) no equivalent branch of any English speaking government.
Just because the OED is the largest dictionary in English doesn't make it any more or less "official" than any other dictionary.
Although I'm not the biggest fan of some of those slang words, the Oxford Dictionary is doing its job of reflecting the ever-changing landscape of the English language, including the appearance of the latest slang.
Originally posted by JonathanValjean Although I'm not the biggest fan of some of those slang words, the Oxford Dictionary is doing its job of reflecting the ever-changing landscape of the English language, including the appearance of the latest slang.
My understanding was that the OED was the Official English dictionary specifically because it was compiled by upper class twits. I also remember reading that the OED did not include a word until it had been in general usage for 50 years, the article was based around the inclusion of Hobbit
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