This is both inevitable and not a bad thing. ![]() Yet there is one constant theme in dictionaries from then until now: they are all out of date by the day they are published. The science of horology has changed a considerable amount since Johnson wrote these words, as has the art of lexicography. Among these witticisms was "Dictionaries are like watches, the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.” The great 18th century lexicographer Samuel Johnson said and wrote many witty things about dictionaries and the people who make them. However, these tend to be grammatical issues that have some bearing on the meaning of a word, rather than grammatical issues such as sentence structure. Since dictionaries serve as catalogs of the language they will often also deal with issues relating to grammar. The question of whether the genitive apostrophe came about as a result of English shifting away from being a heavily inflectional language (in which this punctuation mark stood in for certain now-discarded case endings) or whether it served as a substitution for part of the word his is an issue that might be referred to as grammatical, but literally is just a word that has taken on multiple meanings. The reason that we include a definition for that sense of literally that makes your eyeballs hurt has nothing to do with grammar. Dictionary makers also tend to be not nearly as concerned with grammar as people think they should be (an impression that is based on the letters people send to us). Many people conflate grammar and usage, and while there may be some overlap between the treatment of these two subjects in a dictionary, lexicographers tend to distinguish between them. They differ in scope and ambition, in terms of the geography and register of the language they cover, and in terms of accuracy. Almost all of these are general monolingual works, and there are thousands of other dictionaries that deal with slang, learner’s English, and specialized fields.Įvery one of these dictionaries is different from the others. How many? Well, it is not possible to give an exact number, but in Arthur Kennedy’s 1927 Bibliography of Writings on the English Language he lists well over 500 published between 16. Send us feedback about these examples.We often hear people refer to any alphabetically organized book of defined words (especially if they think it supports their position) as “the dictionary.” This hurts our feelings, for it makes it sound as though there was only one such book, and all the lexicographers out there, toiling away for years on end to craft careful explanations of hundreds of thousands of words, are all just repurposing some master list, perhaps by changing the font, or putting a new cover on an existing book.Ī great number of English dictionaries have been published since Robert Cawdrey first released his A Table Alphabeticall in 1604. ![]() These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'discord.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Julia Wick, Los Angeles Times, 28 July 2023 See More 2023 But Hollywood labor discord has historically been handled in-house, with little influence or assistance from Los Angeles City Hall. Richard Fontaine, Foreign Affairs, 7 Aug. 2023 Americans’ rising distrust in key democratic institutions such as elections, the judiciary, law enforcement, and the military means that malign actors do not have to create discord in the United States. 2023 Online propaganda campaigns have struggled to replicate the success of early influence efforts, such as Russia’s efforts to sow discord ahead of the 2016 election. 2023 Camden’s failure to win court approval to exit bankruptcy after nearly three years highlights the growing discord among. 2023 Mulligan and Cooper are both incredible in these scenes of bubbling marital discord, gently sniping at each other and retreating, the overwhelming love between them, painfully, still very much visible. ![]() Steven Lee Myers, New York Times, 11 Sep. support for Ukraine, or more generally to sow internal discord. 2023 The goal can be to undermine trust in specific policies, like U.S. Sean Williams, Harper's Magazine, 11 Sep. 2023 In 2001, when an intoxicated crown prince shot and killed Birendra and eight other royals, Prachanda, sensing discord, upped the ante, firebombing infrastructure and killing civilians. Noun Republicans have seized on the discord, putting Democrats on the defensive ahead of next year’s presidential elections.
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