Re: file searching/vista help

[Paul Lagasse pglagasse@xxxxxxxx]

Bill Troop wrote:
> But what's the harm in noting that something is erroneous when it is?
> What's the worst thing that can happen? That the user might blush in
> the privacy of his scriptorium?
For a definition of willy-nilly as sloppily, I'd just as soon not have
it. It's a label with a tinge of judgment, and without knowing how that
sense arose, I'd not call it that. (And I don't trust that
lexicographers and etymologists know these things for certain.)
Will they start similarly labeling adder or pea as "erron. sp." (up
front, not in the etymology)? (Web 10 does give some pronunciations
labeled erroneous, but so subtly labeled -- with a division sign -- that
the label is easy to miss.) If the mistake is really a mistake, and if
the mistake is an old one to which we're habituated, then it's often
just another word or sense.
> Take for example the OED on 'bubukle' -- 'A confusion of bubo and
> carbuncle (put into the mouth of Fluellen).
> 1599 Shakes. Hen. V, iii. vi. 108 His face is all bubukles and
> whelkes.' Do we think less of Shakespeare because he was on one
> occasion careless with this word?

No, but the OED seems to be unsure whether Shakespeare is careless or not.
> Yet it's interesting that (according to the Web versions, for what
> they are worth) Webster 1828 simply qualifies the word as 'not used'
> and Webster 1913 doesn't even add that qualification. Is there a kind
> of reverse linguistic snobbery deep in the American lexicographical soul?
I've been a lexicographical interloper for both American and British
publishers (no one great or wonderful) and found them much the same.
Once they've made their philosophical, stylistic, marketing, and
monetary decisions (not nec. in that order), they tend to stick to them.
I think there's some snobbery on both the prescriptivist and
descriptivist sides (with weird results at time, as when W3I forswore
capitalizations), but they both are driven fine mix of believed-in
standards and marketing.
> For that matter, why does Am Her remain the one major dictionary to
> investigate Proto-Indo-European roots?
My cynical response would be that once they set up that and a somewhat
more prescriptivist approach (their usage panel) as distinguishing
features and marketing tools for the first edition, it was easy and
probably essential to keep them around for later editions.

Paul Lagasse