Nay, let us refer to the press release:
Oxford Learner’s Dictionary, what is that? In any case the Simpsonization of language proceeds apace.
Popular entertainment has been adding new words to the language since Shakespeare. (Actually earlier, if we want don’t want to quibble about Modern English vs Middle English.) Curmudgeons of his day complained about it, too. But language is defined by the people who speak it, and usage ever evolves.
Legitimize?
Oxford Learners recognizes both:
Okay–a 23-year-old press release is a better cite than the current Oxford dictionary. Got it.
I mean, it’s right there at the link:
Or, if you specifically want to know what Oxford’s Learner’s Dictionary is, go to the page and read the “About Us” page.
Also, dictionaries don’t give words “a pass.” They’re not the Miss Manners of language, however much some people want them to be.
I think, at this point, the quality of your argument is clear, and I’m not sure there’s more to be said.
I think the OP wants an Académie Française for American English, and it’s never going to happen.
Ah, crap, I somehow missed this was already posted.
Little known fact, the word “curmudgeon” itself was first used on an episode of I Love Lucy.
No, I just want people to stop throwing around one particular and only recently corrupted term. You can do that. After that, you can decimate all you like.
I get how language changes. Tut-tut and finger-wag if you want, call me names even - “prescriptivist”? Maybe in this one instance, but you descriptivists can be just as tiresome.
“Corrupted” is a very difficult word to understand in this concept, unless it has a religious meaning.
Tee hee!
Urban rumor. What Desi actually said was that Lucy was being a “corn merchant” in one of her schemes, adding a popcorn machine to his act.
“Identifying.”
The Bard was responsible for coining, or at least popularizing, a vast number of words and phrases in common English use today. And writers, musicians, politicians, and pundits have continued the tradition of contributing to and expanding the use of words since. It is what makes language risk and distinctive, instead of fetid and dead like Latin.
Except the bizlingo term “It’s in our DNA.” Anyone using that phrase without reference to genetics or cellular biochemistry needs to be lined up against the wall and shot.
Stranger
Yep, it’s terrible when scientists describe how the world is, instead of how it ought to be.
The dictionary doesn’t define descriptivism as ‘tiresome’ at all, so it is not.
Indeed–descriptivists are tiresome to prescriptivists for the same reason that astronomers are tiresome to astrologers.
Armchair linguists are tiresome to regular people.
Nah, dog. Regular people don’t bitch and complain about double negatives, so won’t really ever need to encounter “armchair linguists.” What is tiresome is people who correct my language when I’m speaking in my own dialect and knowing goddamned well what I’m doing. (Of course, speaking in “prestige dialect” around the peers I grew up with would give off a scent of me “putting on airs” or thinking I’m better than everyone else for speaking “standard” English. No matter what education I got, I’m still pulykamell from the block.)
Yes, but are you the “regular person,” or are you the “armchair linguist?” You are, after all, the poster who started a thread complaining about people using words wrong.