Is there one single “ace of spades” dictionary that trumps all others? We sometimes see exchanges like this in Great Debates:
Poster A: That word implies X. Did you really mean X?
Poster B: Well, my dictionary states that X means…
Poster C (poo-pooing Poster B’s dictionary of choice): You need to be looking in [Poster C’s dictionary of choice]. If you did that, you’d see that X can be used in such a way…
And so on.
I give up. In which dictionary should I be looking?
Well, my favorite for this purpose is Bryan Garner’s A Dictionary of Modern American Usage; it’s an outstanding work of scholarship. Instead of wasting space with etymologies and definitions, ADMAU has a usage note for each entry, as well as short essays on categories of error. It’s not an exhaustive dictionary; Garner includes only those words which are misspelled, misused, or misunderstood by writers and speakers of English (it’s still 700 pages, though).
If you want a more exhaustive, and somewhat less opinionated dictionary, try the American Heritage dictionary. A response to the descriptivist leanings of the latest offerings from the major publishers, the AHD provides guidance from its Usage Panel, a panel of experts from all aspects of writing who are polled to determine the degree of acceptanc eof any particular usage.
I think that you are looking for the Oxford English Dictionary.
In English the biggest and most relied upon is the
Oxford English Dictionary. Often called the OED.
Even other dictionaries refer to it.
In American English, the Webster’s Third New International
Dictionary is often considered the most complete and the
one most often copied. In the print edition, it is also
the heaviest.
Sadly they did not take effort to protect the copyrigt and
now anyone can call a dictionary a Webster.
What makes these authoritative is the research that continues.
Whenever they find a word used in a different manner, they
cite the source and keep it on file. If it comes into common
usage, it gets into the dictionary.
No, the OED is entirely wrong for this sort of thing. As a reference for determining the history of a word’s usage, it is the sine qua non, but as a tool for determining who’s right and who’s wrong, it’s as bad as tea leaves.
You really, really need to give a cite and a reason for this post. Otherwise, your credibility on this message board is completely screwed. The Oxford English Dictionary should never be compared to “tea leaves” and I am deeply puzzled that anyone with any scholarship ability would claim this or is it true, as I presume, that you just made it up because you don’t know what you are talking about.
dictionary.com gives you search results from several sources.
Should be enough information to cover most situations.
And it’s easier to use.
If by “made it up” you mean “is my post my own opinion,” then yes, it is. If you want a citation, you’ll need to actually read the frickin’ thing, because my post is the result of just that. The OED is indeed the paramount scholarly work of our time, and when I want to learn the entire history of the word “nice,” or the earliest appearance of “shag,” it’s the final word. Its very completeness, however, makes it less useful, IN MY OPINION, for settling arguments of the type described by Attrayant; given two definitions, one of which is wrong, but common, the OED will very likely contain both of them. It will require careful reading to determine which is preferred, which will likely elicit the retort “I don’t think that’s what it says.”
In other words, the OED is authoritative, but not sufficiently authoritarian.
As for the tea leaves, I was referring not to their accuracy, but their inscrutability.
What I took great offense to was your “tea leaves” comment. The OP asked if there is a dictionary that is the ultimate authority on the English language. I, and other Dopers, state that it is the Oxford English Dictionary. I stand by this answer and it looks like you do too but in a convoluted way. The OED does not contain entries that are not false but may be hard for the layperson to interpret. I did not mean to insult your scholarship but it seems that you are reading too much into the question. I will try to state it again in a form that you may agree with.
The Oxford English Dictionary is the ultimate work of scholarship on the history and use of words in the English language. The printed version spans 22 volumes and does not serve well as a day to day dictionary. For English scholars and publishers of more concise dictionaries, however, it is the ultimate authority.
I’ll second the use of the OED as the ultimate arbiter, followed by the American Heritage, whose usage panel is good for fine point of usage.
A simple reading of the OED will ultimately determine the meaning of the word, and the cites will show you how common any particular usage is.
To expand slightly on what’s been said already, it depends on how authoritative a dictionary you need and how much you can spend. The American Heritage Dictionary is about $30 and will probably satisfy most of your needs for reading and writing (particularly American English). The Oxford English Dictionary is about $300 (in the edition where all the pages have been reduced and you have to use the magnifier included with the dictionary). Its entries go back to the beginnings of English and are extremely complete. You’ll notice that when someone asks a question in General Questions about a word, most of the time someone will eventually cite the entry in the OED. In fact, I generally think that it’s not worth answering a question in GQ about words unless one has checked the OED first.
All the above assumes that there IS an answer to such questions, which is absurd. The meaning of a word is determined by current usage and current usage can, and often does, differ for different populations and even people. My wife and I have been in dispute for several years over whether “plethora” does or does not necessarily have a perjorative meaning. The dictionaries all seem to agree with her that it does, but I see it used all over the place (well, not all over; it is not a common word after all, but many places anyway) with no perjorative intent and I conclude that whatever the dictionary says that is what it means. It is not like calculus where the derivative of x^2 is 2x, that’s what it was yesterday and that’s what it will be tomorrow. Words do change meaning and dictionaries are quite correctly slow to record this. And it is only usage that in the end determines this. For history, the OED is unexcelled. For truly current usage, no dictionary can give the answer.
As someone recently involved in something similar (as Poster B), I must mention that your OP doesn’t address what actually happens in some (many, even?) of those exchanges. Let me append:
[ul][li]Poster A: Group J are K by definition O of word W.Poster B: <Posts valid proof that Group J are not whatever definition of O of word W.>[/li][li]Poster A: Well, by definion E of word W, group J really is K![/li][li]Poster B: <recognizes that poster A is dishonest in his citing strategy.>[/ul][/li]
That exchange doesn’t have anything to do with the choice of the dictionary. It has everything to do with the choice of strategy, the methodology of argument.
Let’s also remember that the language evolves constantly, and seemingly faster all the time. A great dictionary that was last revised 15 or 20 years ago will miss hundreds or thousands of nuances that a newer dictionary will include.
It is also true that the major dictionaries borrow from one another. If you read definitions in several dictionaries, they will often seem oddly similar to one another. Most of the differences you have been arguing about are in the amenities, not in the basic definitions.
Hari Seldon: There is such a thing as correct usage, or your language denegrates to, well, gibberish. The Oxford provides notes on that correct usage, if you are intelligent enough to understand it, as should all dictionaries. In fact, if a dictionary does not take a stand on usage, it has no real reason for being. After all, what, exactly, is it doing if not listing correct definitions? Listing the incorrect ones and confusing the reader, who actually wants a useable product?
Listing current usage and the path (if known) by which the language arrived at that usage.
Language is constantly evolving, as it is a means of communication, not communication itself. Urban slang may be gibberish to academics, academic-speak may be gibberish to inner-city dwellers, but each group can be understood by their peers.
As Monty pointed out, exchanges on this board are more often determined by methodology and logic, not the choice of dictionary.
I agree with Nametag. The OED has a great deal of information and is useful for some purposes, but in these situations one wants a definition that is as succinct as possible without being inaccurate and that reflects current usage. I vote American Heritage.
to get back to the original question, when someone is trying to prove a point they use the dictionary that most closely describes what they are trying to prove.
we all walk around with a lot of useless information in our heads and then we shoot off our mouth about something we think is correct. then we try to back that up with a dictionary that proves our point.
the other situation is the different possible meanings to a word based on where you live. as an example, don’t ever try to argue with someone from kentucky. they have their own language, rules and laws and if you appear to win the argument better start planning your funeral.
Since this opinion is both extremely common and completely wrong on every level (in my own opinion), it’s probably worth some time to try to take it apart.
Let’s start by prying apart pieces of language. Language and grammar do have a set of rules that can be articulated, and are (mostly) agreed to by most literate speakers. That they exist and work can be seen by the fact that we can write and use spell checkers and grammar checkers, even if the latter are almost always too literal to apply to anything but the most formal writing.
Usage and pronunciation do not have a set of rules that can be as easily articulated. In fact, most attempts to formulate these into rules garners enormous opposition by some segment of the audience.
Any study of English will quickly show that spelling and grammar rules have been fairly well fixed for at least a hundred years. We can read Sherlock Holmes, say, with a fair assurance that we will not trip over either the spelling or grammar (barring some British spellings that usually get corrected for American editions.) It is equally certain that Conan Doyle would have no difficulty applying his rules to this board.
But he could not so easily do so for usage. Our writing – as is most text we encounter – is colloquial, contains any number of slang and idiomatic words and phrases, and uses hundreds of words in ways in which Conan Doyle would find unfamiliar, uncomfortable, or just plain wrong.
This is just a measure of the way that English has evolved over the past hundred years. It’s a reasonable guess that this evolution is speeding up rather than diminishing. At any moment some terms in everyday use have changed or added meanings, some terms are in the process of doing so and are usually accepted in those senses, some terms are in the process of doing so and are usually disapproved in those senses, and some terms have just started the process and are often considered solecisms by most.
Who approves and disapproves? Who can we turn to for the authoritative voice that can state with certainly which are good and which are not.
No one.
No individual, no dictionary, no professor, no writer, not even William Safire (whose books bravely prove that every single pronouncement he makes is wrong).
The best example of how impossible this is comes from the American Heritage Dictionary and its famed usage panel. Here are 100+ educated, experienced, nuanced users of the English language who are asked their opinions on a list of usage questions. And I will wager money (without having done the actual examination) that no two of these lists agree on every single question of usage. If the best and brightest among us cannot agree on questions of usage, then what hope is there for the rest of us mortals. (Not to mention that every time AH runs its poll, the percentage of respondents finding a usage acceptable changes. Even if by some miracle a bunch of their panel were to find themselves in agreement today, it is a certainly that ten years from now they would be in violent disagreement.) Any other comparable body would run into the exact same problem.
I’ve had the compact edition of the OED for over thirty years. (Got it for a dollar as a present for joining a book club. Those were the days.) That means it came out before the updates. And that means that the definitions in it are based on British usage of the 1920s. I wouldn’t use it for today’s American usage on a bet. (I wouldn’t even use Fowler’s on usage. I have – among many other, and if memory serves me correctly – Nicholson’s Modern American Usage based on Fowler. Even 75 years ago British and American usage varied too much for one standard to prevail.)
So what is the OED – or any other dictionary – good for? Lots of things. Definitions. [All definitions that you will likely encounter in everyday usage, including ones that you may not agree with. If these are not contained, then and only then is a dictionary useless, for it doesn’t contain the words you read and hear, then what good is it?] Spelling(s). Pronunciation(s). Derivation(s). Examples of usage today and throughout history. Secondary definitions. Synonyms and antonyms. Pictures. Reference material. And yes, sometimes, for some words, as one piece among many, usage.
The best advice is to have several dictionaries, for each is better at some of these pieces than others. And be sure to buy a new one every decade or two or else you will be too far behind the curve to make sense of it.
How one determines one’s own understanding of correct usage, and when to use or not use words in certain ways is a matter for Great Debates. There is no one standard; there is no right way to speak English. There are many ways that are so broadly considered wrong that you use them at your peril – except seemingly on the Internet and in e-mail, but that’s another rant for another day.