Re: Is this a word?


Stephen Calder wrote:
Donna Richoux wrote:

Stephen Calder <calder9nospam@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:


Donna Richoux wrote:


Stephen Calder <calder9nospam@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:


the Omrud wrote:


Stephen Calder <calder9nospam@xxxxxxxxx> had it:


Can a word whose referent does not exist properly be called a word?

Of course. Why not?

I agree. But ansible is not in the dictionary.


Maybe it's too new. I've never studying what criteria dictionaries set
forth for inclusion. Merriam-W probably discusses it in their notes
section.

It's thirty years old. Much older than many coinages of the 1990s that
now appear in dictionaries.


Here is a word coined by an award-winning writer and so useful that it
has been taken up and used by several other writers. Yet the thing it is
the name for does not exist.

You mean, like "god" or "fairy"?


Those are disputed.

So being disputed allows them to be considered words, in your system?

You can't get to that conclusion from anything I said.


Yet I did. You brought in the idea of dispute as playing some
significant role. I merely tried to fathom why "dispute" distinguishes
"fairy" from "ansible." You didn't give us much to go by.

The question (not mine) was whether "ansible" was like "god" or "fairy"
in being the name of a nonexistent referent.

My reply was that the existence of gods and fairies is disputed; some
believe in them, some don't. Ansibles, on the other hand, clearly do not
exist. So, no, "ansible" is not like "god" or "fairy".

That does no warrant the conclusion that I believe their being disputed
allows them to be considered words.



There is no-one who believes an ansible exists; yet
it is possible that it may one day be invented. Hence it is in the same
category as teleportation and time travel; not in the same category as a
unicorn.

So, then, is "teleportation" a word? Is "unicorn"? Is "dreng"? What do
you think a word is?


I'm not going to even try to define a word. I think ansible is eligible
for inclusion in dictionaries, yet none has it.


Now I'm not sure whether you think that "being a word" means "being in a
dictionary" or "eligible to be in a dictionary (by some standard)."


I'm seeking opinions as to whether ansible meets the criteria for being
a word and for inclusion in dictionaries.

If you were the editor of the OED would you allow it? It's been around
since 1974 and been taken up and used by a number of award-winning authors.


Onelook.com says:

We found 4 dictionaries with English definitions
that include the word ansible

I think that's going to lead to immediate "dispute" over what is a
"dictionary."

I guess those four could be considered dicitonaries, but they are
outside the mainstream. Most online and all printed dictionaries that I
know of omit "ansible."


You and I may believe the "ansible" does not exist, but there are most
likely people who do. They may not call the communication devices by
that term, but there are many people who believe the Earth is visited
by extraterrestrials regularly, and I would expect some of those to
believe the ETs have devices with which they can communicate
instantaneously (while some other believers might attribute the ability
to communicate instantaneously to ESP). Heck, there are whole modern
*religions* which rest upon the idea that ETs either have visited us or
are capable of visiting us, and I would expect some of the members of
those religions to immediately recognize "ansible" as part of their
belief system, even if they called it by another name.

So the question of the referent not existing is ruled out for the same
reason that you would rule it out in the case of "god" or "angel."

As for whether a word is not a word if it is not in a dictionary, I've
written about this often enough before in Usenet groups. One example is
a message I wrote to alt.english.usage and alt.usage.english on May 19,
2002, in which I quoted from an article at

<http://www.law.com/jsp/statearchive.jsp?type=Article&oldid=ZZZTZZTAHVC>

or

<http://tinyurl.com/hag3e>

which discussed the 1846 Missouri Supreme Court case of *Edgar v.
McCutchen,* in which a man attempted to defend himself from a charge of
slander by proving that a word "was unknown to the English language"
because it was not listed in dictionaries. He lost the case.

I went on to discuss the "Unidentified Authorizing Dictionary":

From
<http://groups.google.com/group/alt.english.usage/msg/63e1eb5085ee9844>

or

<http://tinyurl.com/grwzv>


[begin quote from Usenet post]

While reading *Chasing the Sun: Dictionary Makers and the Dictionaries
They Made* by Jonathon Green, New York: Henry Holt and Company, (C)
1996, I came across an interesting term which is relevant to the
phenomenon: "the Unidentified Authorizing Dictionary," or "UAD."


[quote, from page 18 of Green]


The writer John Algeo, suggesting that only the Bible is similarly
revered, has coined the term "lexicographicolatry" for the concept.
That, again like the Bible, the book became "more venerated than
used...mattered little. A literate household without a dictionary (and
it mattered not what dictionary) was as badly exposed as a shoe
salesman without his pants." The whole concept is epitomized in the
use of a single, all-encompassing phrase: _the dictionary,_
characterized by Rosamund Moon as "UAD: the Unidentified Authorizing
Dictionary, usually referred to as 'the dictionary,' but very
occasionally as 'my dictionary.'" As McDavid notes, the actual
publisher--Random House, Merriam-Webster, OUP--is of marginal
interest. In such remarks as "Is it in the Dictionary?" or "Look it up
in the Dictionary" the dictionary is as monolithic an entity as is
"The Bible," and carries for believers a similar weight of intrinsic
authority.


[end quote]


Moon coined the term in "Objective or Objectionable: Ideological
Aspects of Dictionaries" in _English Language Research 3,_ Birmingham,
England, 1989. Green later quotes again from that work:


[quote, from page 457 of Green]

The mistake, suggests Rosamund Moon, is to believe in any myth of
authority in the first place. "The real subversiveness of dictionaries
does not lie in their condoning or even encouraging nonstandard uses,
as the critics of WNID3 [W3] claimed, but rather in their practice of
covertly promoting the personal views of lexicographers responsible
while overtly setting out those views as if fact. Dictionaries' claims
to 'authority' are hollow: the UAD [Unidentified Authorizing
Dictionary] is a myth."

[end quote]


[end quote from Usenet post]


While I agree that the UAD is a myth, I don't agree with the conclusion
that "Dictionaries' claims to 'authority' are hollow." Modern
lexicographers are authorities in the sense that they are knowledgeable
about language, in the same sense that a lawyer is an authority on the
law. They are not authorities in the sense that the French Academy is
an authority, nor do the editors of any modern descriptive dictionaries
make any such claim.


--
Raymond S. Wise
Minneapolis, Minnesota USA

E-mail: mplsray @ yahoo . com

[end quote from Usenet post]

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Is this a word?
    ... Much older than many coinages of the 1990s that now appear in dictionaries. ... I merely tried to fathom why "dispute" distinguishes ... Ansibles, on the other hand, clearly do not ... for inclusion in dictionaries, yet none has it. ...
    (alt.usage.english)
  • Re: someone wrote my thoughts on Palin
    ... Remember, PJ, boots is the guy who thinks anyone who actually takes ... but regardless of his attempt at redefinition the word racism still ... Authority to follow down the newly minted path of meanings! ... By quoting from dictionaries. ...
    (misc.writing)
  • Re: Common ancestor between man and ape
    ... Dictionaries report on encyclopoedic information under ... as the absolute authority, but when the dictionary uses the word ... I think it's high time you provided some testimonial ... providing some testimonials and some citations of other linguists ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Plausibility Check
    ... That is not a quote; that is your recollection of what you ... The counts of words in unabridged dictionaries ... English in the time of Shakespeare had 200,000 words, ... This is the first time you have mentioned "linguists from Swiss ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Handgun ban in U.S. capital could reach Supreme Court
    ... So if the meaning you suggest is valid you ... Johnson and Walker's Dictionary of the English Language ... Not all dictionaries can be called a definitive work. ... of recognized authority or excellence; ...
    (talk.politics.guns)