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Oxford Dictionary Does Science Fiction
Embedded Geek writes: "The News Log for Locus has an item about
the Oxford English Dictionary's attempt to capture unique words and phrases used in various fields. It has begun with a pilot site for science fiction. Specifically, they are looking for published uses of specific words in Science Fiction, SF Criticism, and SF Fandom.
The goal is not to create a glossary of terms but rather find the earliest (antedating), latest (postdating), and intermediate (interdating) uses of these words already in the dictionary in books, magazines, etc. They are soliciting help from the public in this effort. Presumably, if this effort is a success, they will begin working on other fields: other literature, programming, open source... who knows?"
No "grok"?
From the OED page:
This list is not meant to be a glossary of SF terminology: it is only a list of those terms that the OED has a particular need to have researched. Certain terms have been excluded from this list because we know beyond doubt that we have the earliest possible example, the circumstances of the coinage being known. These include dalek, robot, and grok. There is no need to point out the absence of these words.
Promote proofreading. Don't mod up sloppy posts.
Read the professor and the madman, it's a great read and will explain to you that this is the same process they used to collect all of the original words...
It was a joint collaboration very much like open-source software!
I bet this turns out like The Futurological Congress. .feetback? Infoot and outfoot! I think we're getting somewhere. Feetality, twofootalitarianism." ."
"Onefoot, twofoot. Threefooter, fourfooted. Footing, footingly, footling. Footage, befootery. Footment. And footloose gets you footless, unfooted, defeeted. Ah, defeetism. Feetish, feetus. .
"But these words have no meaning!"
"At the moment, no, but they will. .
I'm torn. The OED is an extremely important resource for the English language, and having more people contribute can only be a good thing. Actually, the Oxford has a history of community contributions so the concept is not entirely new. Just the medium.
On the other hand, online access costs something like US$550/year for a private individual, which just seems a little excessive. It seems a little like getting open source coders to work on your closed source commercial project.
Yes, it is expensive to build and maintain something like the OED and they claim that they're not actually trying to make money, just cover their costs. Here's some numbers in an old Salon article:
http://www.salon.com/books/log/1999/09/08/oed/
I guess it just saddens me that access is so unaffordable, when the resource itself is so rich. Am I being unreasonable?
If you say, "now I'll be modded down because of X", I'll happily oblige.
To me this seems to be a good case of an attempt to give credit where credit is due. Nothing like having the satisfaction that thousands, if not millions (or i guess billions) of people will now understand the origins of some of our vernacular.
This could come in handy for future generations as well...
An interesting insight to add to analyze within the context of the "Whorfian Hypothesis"
Having to do with studying how a language evolves, and becomes structured, even words that were 'made-up' have a bit of relevance to them. When a new word is formed it must have a base (to allow for proper edict realizations) or more specifically a history. That's sort-of how the Klingon Language got it's gears going; taking the words that were used (in context - disecting sentences) and applying the rules to form the rest of what has become Klingon. English (even bastardized American English [the sort I use]) follows the same sort of process.
I would guess that this new attempt of Oxford's will be even more revolutionary than many percieve at this time.
"It's the Law of the Universe, and I'm the sheriff." Slash-cott 2/10-2/17
Copy of a message I sent the editor :) I can't believe they couldn't predate 1971 for AI (see Sci Fi Word List)
:) Next time I see him [JM], I'll mention it :)
Hi Mike,
Science predates Science Fiction
Winton
AI or Artificial Intelligence
Coined by John McCarthy [in a SCIENCE setting, not SCI-FI!], 1956. Seems to be fairly unanimous.... concept goes way back.
" He [JM] invited them to Vermont for "The Dartmouth summer research project on artificial intelligence." (reference)
1956 John McCarthy coined the term "artificial intelligence" as the topic of the Dartmouth Conference, the first conference devoted to the subject. (reference)
Let's just hope their none too vindictive
The Slashdot Effect: (phrase, colloq.) The process by which a server is brought down causing hardworking Oxford dictionary staff to lose many, many invaluable hours of work and research. (see: assholes)
:)