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Major Update For OED Science Fiction Project
ColdChrist writes "The Oxford English Dictionary Science Fiction project was last reported on here back in March 2004. The site has been redesigned and relaunched; the biggest change is that the OED's database of citations of SF words is now made (mostly) available via the website. The OED (a nonprofit organization) does not usually make its work available in this way, but OED has agreed to publicly open up this part of its database to acknowledge the great contribution volunteers have made to this project. That means that if you contribute a cite, it's viewable by everyone; see here for more details. Also, quite a few more words are being added from an internal pending list."
It still wont get you laid.
I grok the pain his webserver is going to feel.
Quite a few of the new additions are just compounds of existing words. I'd associate new addtions as concepts, like 'grok' for which there wasn't aready an equivilent.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
enough to write some cromulent sci-fi.
Google Dictionary. Coming soon from a Google Labs near you. With all the dictionaries out there, Urbandictionary, Technical dictionaries, Oxford English, Acronym dictionaries, and now this SF dictionary, its time for a good way to search them.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
i mean we're talking 3 minutes after the story posted.
(en) Please come back later
(de) Bitte versuchen sie es spaeter nocheinmal
(nl) Gelieve te komen later terug
(no) Vennligst prov igjen senere
(fr) Veuillez revenir plus tard
(es) Vuelto por favor mas adelante
(pt) Voltado por favor mais tarde
(it) Ritornato prego più successivamente
Hey, OED: my Nemory entry is available for reprint in your dictionary, provided your "earliest citation" credits its Wikipedia entry.
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make install -not war
I'm too busy right now to contribute. But... as soon as I enter the asylum again rest assured I will continue contributing as I did before!
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
How are we going to maintain our separation from society (or should I say elitism) if anyone can just look up what the hell we mean??
If they want to really open it up, they should combine their efforts with that of Wiktionary
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Free iPod? Try a free Mac Mini
Or a free Nintendo DS, GC, PS2, Xbox
Wired article as proof
The site has been redesigned and relaunched; the biggest change is that the OED's database of citations of SF words is now made (mostly) available via the website. The OED (a nonprofit organization) does not usually make its work available in this way, but OED has agreed to publicly open up this part of its database to acknowledge the great contribution volunteers have made to this project.
What did they intend to do with a private SF words database in the first place? It's not like they're doing anyone a favor by 'opening it to the public'... especially if its updated by volunteers...
What would ANYONE do with a SF words database anyway? I'm confused...
Eureka Science News - automatically updated
I hereby donate this citation to OED on the following conditions
a. That OED acknowledges that it is in the public domain
b. That OED makes this citation freely available on the internet as a single text file download
I don't see any links to this Jesse character on the OED site. Is this April 1st? Non-profit? OED? The company that sells dictionaries? Curiouser and curiouser.
If Google continues to support Wikipedia or even acquire it, then they might increase the support for Wiktionary. However, the answers.com thing they have set up is pretty nice since it brings a bunch of dictionary and similar references together.
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Free iPod? Try a free Mac Mini
Or a free Nintendo DS, GC, PS2, Xbox
Wired article as proof
Because then the person who contributed this story could see that 'cite' is a verb, not a noun. "Contribute a cite"! Ugh!
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
[Scotty Voice]Captain, Their Server Blew Up, She Couldn't Take The Pow'r[/Scotty Voice] Although it is defiantly interesting, and for what it's worth (and the very few seconds i saw of it) I like it =)
This is good news, but the people at the OED Fantasy Fiction project are really getting pissed at all the publicity that the SF project keeps getting.
Geek Of The Day, "A geeky place for geeky faces."
See subject.
I am the greatest troll of all time!
All hail Willy on Wheels!
The server operates using Block Transfer Computations on a positronic core.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
It didn't include the word jedi.
On the plus side, it does include klingon.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
And terms like "megayear", "kiloday"; well it's hard to see why they need defining at all. Even though I'm a pedantic bore, it still seems overgeekly.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
Here is the right link to Wiktionary!
... I've lost the name and author of the story, but still have the book which is somewhere in my collection of four boxes of second hand sci-fi books. The hard way is going to read every book again...
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Must have definition of an Inverse Tacheon Pulse!!!
Reconfiguring the deflector dish... We be pimpin'
Doku
a.k.a. 'Just MacGyver It!'
I found over 300 references to pulling a MacGyver or just MacGyver it...
To do a MacGyver or MacGyver a solution is to take small items and find a creative solution to a larger problem.
The origin of the term is, of course, the TV show MacGyver where the main character would find creative solutions to problems using small items such as paper clips, chewing gum, and pocket lint.
The OED was put together by a large army of volunteers, who laboriously found and copied out examples of the use of words over the years, researched the etymology, and mailed the information to the editor. The editors (the project took 71 years (or less than 50, or more than 100, depending on how you choose to count), and several editors died of old age along the way) would assemble the scraps of information into a coherent entry for every word which was ever used in written English.
But, I think they're charging a lot for their dictionary, and I wouldn't donate any material to them.
Oxford and Clarendon Press only paid for a small staff, and the vast majority of the gruntwork was done by the army of English and American volunteer philologists. The 12 volume reissue was done in 1933, and the main body of the work hasn't changed since then, though they do issue supplements. In short, they've long since recovered their costs, and any income from it is pure profit.
It seems to me that the OED is something of a profit center for them. I would be happy to make contributions to a project which was making my free contribution freely available to all. If Oxford wants me to contribute to their cash cow, they can send me some of the cash.
See what I've been reading.
You're right. It seems dictionaries are letting in the word 'cite' as a clipped version of 'citation'. They'll let anything in these days :-)
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
It's the fault of that descriptivist disease running around university campuses for the last two decades. Someday a hard rain is gonna fall, and wash all the scum away ... .
Try typing "define:" into google followed by whatever you're looking for.
r y e
For example:
http://www.google.com/search?q=define%3A+dictiona
http://www.google.com/search?q=define%3A+artichok
The Tolkien Elves spoke Elvish languages, though there was no one language they would have called "Elvish". They mostly spoke either Sindarin (the vernacular) or Quenya (the Elvish Latin---the ancient language). Dwarves spoke Khuzdul, but nobody understands it except the dwarves, since they're so secretive. And the Men spoke Westron.
No, I'm not a real dork, I never managed to plow my way through the books. I just googled that up.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
What?! No whuffie?
"War makes me sad." - Me
Perhaps, their meanings in a SF context, are what's recorded in a SF dictionary.
To be fair, there are many words that have very different meanings in different context, for a blatant example there's the scientific meaning of theory, then there's the creationists' "evolution is only a theory" meaning which confuses the scientific meaning with the layman's meaning, much more like a hypothesis in science.
But when an [good] science fiction story takes a word from science, I see no reason to change the meaning.
Tag lost or not installed.
Check it out:
http://www.infoshop.org/sf/index.php/Main_Page
While I hadn't heard of the define option that others described, I've had excellent results looking for definitions of technical terms by adding the word glossary to the word in the search string - many glossaries are reurned with the word defined.
Tag lost or not installed.
I see a huge ptoential for problems here as different authors in the past have defined their own meaning for words. Some of the more common words are in the most peril. A Phaser Rifle in one context may be something completely different in another. Depending on the time the story waas written, I would expect that the definition would change to more closely match actual science. But if the Dictionary remains true to it's prupose, it will be categorizing the word based on it's earliest instance. I can see where the contents of this 'dictionary' could become jaded and dated. I think it would be more appropriately name a Concordance of Sci-Fi words rather than a dictionary.
I was thinking that if they want to open something up in order to acknowledge contributions, they should open up their dictionary site, since every word in it was a result of society's evolution, and nothing to do with them. But I guess that's too non-profit for some organisations, huh? ;)