OED Violates itself, On a Leaky Raft, Caught by a Sculptor!

No, This Won't Be Titillating

Dictionaries – I’m referring here mainly to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) -- are bodies ofknowledge, not physiological bodies, so be assured this posting will be tantalizing, but not titillating.

A Side Comment, Sort of:

Younger readers probably have no idea what I just referred to. After all, giving “self-violation” a sexual connotation is so day-before-yesterday!

Actually, that “side comment” is central because it illustrates this posting’s main point:

Dictionary definitions change as society changes – but not in real time. (See “Leaky Raft” below).

Back to OED

The OED is generally considered the gold standard in lexicography. So it’s newsworthy -- at least blog-worthy -- to report that OED (Ready for this?) has violated one of its own definitions!

To make the situation truly involuted, the word it has violated is “Dictionary.”

Evidence? Consider OED’s definition of “Dictionary” in both the print and online editions. It begins:

“1. a. A book dealing with the individual words of a language ….” (OED online, accessed 7/7/09)

I highlighted the guilty word -- “book.” Guilty, that is, of appearing under false pretenses as of 2008, when Oxford University Press announced it has no plans to publish OED again in book form; future updates will be incorporated in its online edition.

The media response was quick but, let’s face it, underwhelming. Predictably, it was a New York Times Magazine columnist who gave expression to a rarified emotion: “Lexicographical Longing.” In her column (May 11, 2008) with that title, Virginia Heffernan reminisced about the OED her father gave her many years before, and bemoaned:

“…the O.E.D. was forever. Wasn’t it?

No.

The future is here, and the immortal O.E.D., the one that lives in bound pages last published micrographically in 1991, is obsolete — at least according to the folks who publish it.”

Some Get It, Some Don’t

Several other long-respected book-form dictionaries that are also online -- Webster’s Collegiate, Random House, among others culled on www.dictionary.com – also anachronistically limit their definition of “Dictionary” to “A book that….”

Others waffle. For example, Wordsmyth (www.wordsmyth.net) which I believe was “born” (i.e., first appeared) online, at first is limiting, but inclusive in its second definitiion:

“1. a reference book that contains a list of words ….

2. the electronic form of such a list of words….”

Merriam-Webster Online (www.merriam-webster.com) has caught up with itself by starting its definition as “1 : a reference source in print or electronic form...” [my highlighting], but then reverts to old-fashioned definitions for bi-lingual and other specialized dictionaries, saying both are “reference books…” even though online versions exist.

Cambridge University Press one-ups Oxford with this offering from its Advanced Learners Dictionary (dictionary.cambridge.org ): “1. A book… or a similar product for use on a computer.”

The Wiki Approach. Wiktionary (en.wiktionary.org) – a product of non-experts’ collaboration, and the only dictionary of those mentioned here not bound (pun intended) by any print tradition -- shows that it is embedded in the wide-ranging and ever-changing media of contemporary communication. Its definition of dictionary begins: “A publication, usually a book…” and defines publication as “The act of publishing printed or other matter.”

A Leaky Raft .

You wondered about the leaky raft? It is my metaphor for the point about dictionaries and social change.

Think of words, and especially meanings, as fluid -- constantly flowing like a more-or-less tumultuous river. (Theorists will find that metaphor used even more broadly, in Harrison White’s 2008 book, Identity and Control: How Social Formations Emerge.)

In that flow of meanings, dictionaries are one type of socially-organized attempt to carry groups of people along together – that is, enable groups to share meanings and therefore to carry on reasonably coordinated conversations and activities.

Dictionaries help stabilize meanings, for a while, and their creators do manage to repair broken slats in the metaphoric rafts, but they can never be completely up-to-date – at best, they are leaky rafts.

Art has the Final Word.

Using a wonderfully pun-ny title (“Atlanta artist digs old books”), a reviewer for the Atlanta Journal Constitution (7/3/09) describes 30-something sculptor Brian Dettmer’s work. In Catherine Fox’s words:

“Dictionaries and encyclopedias, once library stalwarts, are fast becoming relics. Now that information is in a state of constant update and available almost instantly to anyone with an Internet connection, what is the use of any compendium of knowledge bound between two covers?

Brian Dettmer has found one. Wielding knives, tweezers, surgical tools and the patience of Job, the Atlanta artist transforms book has-beens into art…”

To see how Dettmer’s use of words in their material form, not their “dictionary meanings,” dramatically closes this posting, follow this link (or google him yourself): centripetalnotion.com/2007/09/13/13:26:26/