Dictionaries

[P3D Paul S. Boyer <boyer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

WARNING! The following post deals with terminology.  If you are tired
of this discussion, skip to next message.

Gabriel Jacob and several others of our group here on photo-3d seem
to feel that what a majority thinks a word means is definitive.  The
matter is a bit more complicated.  The majority has no idea of the
meanings of many words.  Here we are dealing with two functions of
dictionaries: the proscriptive, and the merely decriptive.  Older
lexographers tended toward the former: they saw dictionaries as
teaching tools.  Frequently they inserted their own ideas of meaning
and spelling.  Noah Webster is responsible for the way Americans
spell color (instead of "colour"), and center (rather than "centre").
 The semiliterate hicks had to be taught how to spell, so might as
well tell them how things should be done.

The trend more recently has been to include every conceivable meaning
for a word, whether it makes any sense or not.  In this respect
modern lexographers are tending to become merely descriptive, and
they are exerting little guidance on the population, except to
encourage an attitude of "anything goes."  A really good dictionary,
like the Oxford English Dictionary, gives comments and examples,
which enable a close reader to distinguish the usage of the informed
from that of the uniformed.

Mr. Jacob's example of steam is a good one.  Any scientist knows that
steam is the gaseous phase of water at a temperature above the
boiling point, and as such it is invisible to the human eye.  Period.
 That's physics.  The fact that a majority of yokels thinks otherwise
-- well, that is a descriptive fact, but it doesn't alter correct
usage in the knowledgable community of the educated.

A majority of the public believes all sorts of things which are not
true.  Some 85% think that raising the federal minimum wage is a good
idea, and will improve the prosperity of the lower-paid portion of
the workforce.  They can belive this fallacy all they want, but it
will not change the result.  As far as I know, there are very few
true economists who would go along with the public prejudice on this
matter.

To call the visible condensation above a teapot "steam" is at best a
harmless folk-expression, but at worst it reflects a total
misunderstanding of a rather fundamental fact.  Someone who believed
this concept of steam would think that clouds were made of steam, and
would probably never be able to work out the hydrologic cycle.  Good
terminology -- particularly in science and technology -- is vital to
understanding, as well as to communication.  We no longer call whales
"fish," because we have learned an important distinction.  We no
longer consider corals to flowers, or to have been formed by
"insects."  As long as science and technology advance, terminology
becomes more precise.  Terminology changes, as it must, to reflect
new discoveries and developments.

Terminology is a tool.  

Hanging above my computer is a framed list of quaint commandments
which I have found to be remarkably applicable, even though the title
is "How to Become a Machinist."  Rule no. 1 is "Keep your cutting
tools sharp."

--Paul S. Boyer   <boyer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>


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