Dr. Language in the News

YD's Robert Beard speaks out on on-line dictionaries
Extra Credit

09/11/2001
The Washington Post (Page A13)
Valerie Strauss
Copyright 2001, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved

Dictionaries are proliferating as never before, both online and on paper. Lexicographers are busy finding new words and, in many cases, determining which ones to delete. The definitive, multivolume Oxford English Dictionary, which is undergoing its first comprehensive revision since it was published in 1933, never deletes a word, but many others do. Staff writer Valerie Strauss asked Wendalyn Nichols, editorial director for Random House Reference, to discuss the publishing of Random House Webster's College Dictionary.

How often do you revise the dictionary?

We revise the dictionary all the time, in that we are constantly updating our database. So it's really a year-round activity. Then, once a year -- usually in July -- we publish the updated content. . . . We have a shortlist of words we're tracking, and before the cutoff date when we send the new content to the printer, we look at the words that we have added since the last printing as well as words we've been tracking, and decide if any other words deserve inclusion.

How do you decide which words belong in a dictionary?

We look for two things: ubiquity and frequency. Ubiquity means that a word is being used in many different contexts: traditional books and newspapers; broadcast and electronic media; and film. Frequency means that we don't just have the odd citation for it, but rather that the term is cropping up often enough to be worth paying attention to.

How important is it to you that a word last a long time in the language? The Macarena lasted only a year or so in your dictionary.

I don't think a word's shelf life is all that important. What is important is to get the right mix of words in a college dictionary so that it is of maximum usefulness to the reader. You could argue about how long some terms will be around, but the main thing is that, as was the case with "Macarena," while that word was current, we had it in the book so people would know how to spell it and pronounce it.

What other words have you recently deleted and why?

The words we take out tend to follow one of three patterns: obsolete technology, such as "Gopher" (an early Web search program); brand names that we thought were becoming more common than the generic term, such as "Snugli"; . . . and terms that turned out not to have staying power, like "gradeflation." Because we update so frequently, we're not too worried if we misjudge a term on occasion.

How much does slang play a role, and what are the arguments for including slang and expletives?

The greatest number of new terms comes from new technology and the sciences, including new health treatments and drugs. After that, informal language and slang contribute the bulk of the terms. Slang is the creative core of the language, and many words that began as slang are simply informal, or even unmarked, now. . . .

When people ask about "slang," what they often really are asking about is nonstandard language, or offensive language. Nonstandard language includes words such as "ain't"; offensive language includes racist and sexist terms, as well as traditional "swear words" relating to sex or religion. All such terms are in the College dictionary. We have extensive usage notes that give warnings about their use. . . . We think it's vital that these words be in the dictionary so that students, second-language learners of English and anyone who isn't sure about a term can look it up and discover the sort of effect it will have to use such a term.

Do you have favorite words? Least favorite words?

Some people react to words for their sound, others for their precision. My favorite words are ones that evoke things I value or that make me happy or that are cathartic to yell at someone. So I love "serendipity" and "grace" and "lyricism," as well as a particularly useful British English expletive to use when someone has done something idiotic, but you wouldn't be able to print it.

Online vs. On the Shelf

• You can search for a definition to find a word in an online dictionary. (Wordsmyth, at www.wordsmyth.net, has this feature.)
• You can search for words you don't know how to spell on all online dictionaries. Ours uses a spell-checker to guess at the word you need.
• You can search with wild cards, which means you can search for rhymes, e.g., searching for "*able" in our dictionary will bring you all the words ending on those letters.
• If you aren't sure of the spelling, you can try "rec??ve" and get the correct spelling of "receive."
• Dictionaries may be hyperlinked, so that if you don't know a word in the definition, a simple click will bring it to you. (Check the 1913 Webster's dictionary at our Web site for an extreme example of that.)
• You can interfold a dictionary and thesaurus as does the Merriam-Webster's we use.
• Indeed, you can integrate it with an encyclopedia or any other reference work: biographical list, map list, etc.
• You can have the word pronounced in an online dictionary, as Merriam-Webster's home site currently does, rather than bother with pronunciation guides.
• You can illustrate an online dictionary with motion pictures if you wish.

Nichols:

You know the famous quip, "Reports of my death were premature"? I'd say the same thing goes for print dictionaries. Everything that Mr. Beard says about the special features of online dictionaries is true, with the exception of his comment about pronunciation: printed pronunciations are still necessary -- at least in American dictionary products -- because American pronunciations are shown phonetically. . . .

But that's not the real issue, is it? The question is, when you're reading a book, do you want to fire up your computer to look up a word you don't know, or do you want to grab a handy paper dictionary? Online dictionaries, and particularly sites like Wordsmyth that search many online word lists, are great for certain activities, but they complement, rather than replace, print dictionaries.

Right now, what a print dictionary has over an online one is portability. You're never going to replace a print dictionary with a computer dictionary as long as that computer is a big heavy thing sitting on your desk, or a portable but expensive thing sitting in your briefcase. Hand-held devices may indeed replace print products eventually, but in the short term there are issues of expense and memory that have to be overcome.

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