Battle of the Dictionaries: Collins vs the OED

Collins is stepping up its PR in an effort to win the ‘battle of the dictionaries’. Today’s ‘stunt’ caught my attention via Radio 4’s Today programme. Meanwhile the Oxford English Dictionary is keeping a lower (but more thoughtful?) profile, by sending one of its key researchers to talk to editors at the recent SfEP Conference.

Collins have issued a list of words that they want to omit from the lexicon and have lined up the usual household names to champion a word each. Poet Laureate Andrew Motion, for instance, has chosen ‘skirr’; and Steven Fry has chosen ‘fubsy’. Their challenge is to get these words mentioned in public places as many times as possible between now and January, in order to merit a place in the Collins’ corpus.

Good stunt*; but should we really take this seriously?

My recent experience of teaching newby copy-editors suggests that many people really don’t understand how dictionaries, and the English Language itself, work. Does this matter? Well, it certainly does if you’re an editor. If you never go further than GCSE, it should, in theory, be acceptable to use a dictionary to check your spelling and not to worry too much about the origin of words and where they might be going. But use of English (or more to the point, mis-use) is a ‘Class Issue’ – not just because of the all-too-familiar debate over ‘political correctness’, but because so often a person’s use and mis-use of English is seized upon by the snipers and gripers as a stick with which to beat those who persistently fail to conform to “the rules” (whatever they may be!).

[John Prescott springs to mind. His political opponents (and sometimes even his friends) ridicule his linguistic jousting, and pick over his words like vultures would a carcass – reveling in every malapropism and mispronunciation, claiming his inability to string together a coherent sentence makes him unfit to govern. Whereas anyone who’s seen him speak at a Party Conference will know that it’s the passion he puts into his speeches that pulls him through every time (and I’m sure he’ll be sorely missed this week in Manchester, if they don’t let him on the podium).]

But if you’re a professional word-smith, you will know that English is ever changing, and in fact you have more influence than most over which words actually make it into the dictionaries, because the best are evidence-based rather than rules-bound, and we editors are the ones who are tweaking the words of the great and the good, and checking their usage: “Did you mean ‘disinterested’ or ‘uninterested’?”.

Both Collins and Oxford (and other publishers too, I dare say) collect examples of usage from all sorts of media, and record that information for posterity.

As Charlotte Brewer, Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford, told SfEP Conference, the Oxford English Dictionary now runs to 20 volumes. Originally it set out to provide historical evidence of usage, but that meant it was not helpful on matters of ‘correctness’. This, says Brewer, has been an on-going dilemma for the editors of the OED. For example, in the 1890s there were two different meanings for ‘disinterested’: not interested (with an example from Donne; 1612); and impartial, unbiased (dated to 1659). Despite this evidence some modern readers will feel the former is ‘wrong’.

First Murray and then Burchfield wrestled with their consciences when it came to ‘editorialising’ (ouch; I’m sure neither would like that word!). These acclaimed OED editors were particularly troubled by pronunciation and profanity:

“It is a free country and a man may call a vase a vawse, a vahse, a vaze or a vase…” said Murray, who then contradicted himself by insisting that the silent p in pneumonia should be voiced because it helped people understand the origins (etymology) of the words.

Burchfield, working on a supplement to the OED in the 1960s and 70s, faced controversy over the definition of the word Jew (including death threats!), and dilemmas over which ‘rude’ words should be included (as Brewer pointed out, the literati were still reeling from the Lady Chatterley case).

He couldn’t resist the temptation to have his say on some of the ‘new-fangled’ words that were suggested: insinuendo (“tasteless”, said B); opinionnaire (“of doubtful usefulness”… well, he was spot on with that); and prioritize (“a word that at present sits uneasily in the language” … but which we’re now quite content to use!).

So next time you’re ‘embrangled’ in a debate over usage, remember that the greatest minds in the linguistic world are similarly troubled – and they don’t have all the answers either!

As for who wins the battle, don't ask me! I bought a new Concise OED after Brewer's talk (so the PR worked on me!) but I don't care for its design which is goes for legibility over detail. So I'm still dipping into my trusty old Chambers for the meatier stuff (favourite: paragoge/paragogue ns. an addition at the end of a word, as t in against, amidst, amongst, whilst).

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* Actually, not such a good stunt. Despite wasting a fair few minutes surfing and Googling, I can only find one primary link to this ‘news’ apart from the Radio 4 prog. – an article in the Times (online). What’s up with the Collins press office?