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Merriam-Webster Launches Open Dictionary
sweganeer writes "Merriam-Webster just released Open Dictionary to better take and share the pulse of language through the Web. Of course, Webster's has long celebrated and conveyed language's evolution - unlike linguistic prescriptivists who fail to grasp that's just what language does; and - where I've compared entries - they've certainly done so in a more consistent, professional fashion than online amateurs have in recent years: might Open Dictionary - in conjunction with Webster's standard Online Dictionary - yield the best of authoritative (top-down) and organic (bottom-up), online lexicography?"
... at least for a laugh.
"Powers. I have them."
The idea for an open dictionary has been around since 1860, and in print since the 1920s (I believe).
Take a gander at "The Meaning of Everything" a book by Simon Winchester. It outlines the fascinating story of the Oxford English Dictionary. The OED is THE dictionary by the way: it is a 30+ volume set that sets out to catalogue every word in the English language and is continuously updated.
How do the updates happen? Readers throughout the world read texts and write out definitions on slips that are returned to the OED offices for compilation and review. Think about the enormity of the undertaking back in the Victorian era. It's really an outstanding achievement.
English has never, ever been a prescriptive language. We've never had a council declaring what stays and what leaves the language.
Anyway, read the book and be duly unimpressed by these half-assed efforts for an on-line dictionary. Go to the nearest university and take a look at the full OED in all its glory.
"Cunt" is an old word and if it's not included in old dictionaries this must be because of prudery not because it wasn't in use. In fact it goes way back and originally had a perfectly ordinary meaning - specifically a "cleft". The gap in a rope where two strands lie against one another is still called a "cuntline" by riggers and sailmakers.