So I know in this post I was joking about going back to using encyclopedias and dictionaries instead of search engines...but now I'm starting to consider it seriously. 😅
Google is getting worse by the day and AI is ruining everything.
Not a very clear or helpful distinction in my opinion. A bit vague. 🤔
"A treatise is a formal written paper about a specific subject. It’s like an essay but longer. A treatise is usually about a serious subject, so you might read a treatise on democracy, but you probably won't read a treatise about chewing gum."
Roget's Thesaurus, created by retired British physician Peter Mark Roget, is first published as Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases Classified and Arranged so as to Facilitate the Expression of Ideas and Assist in Literary Composition in London.
Noah Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language declared Americans free from the tyranny of British institutions and their vocabularies. via @JSTOR_Daily
Publication of the Oxford English Dictionary is completed.
The 125th & last fascicle covered words from Wise to the end of W & was published in 1928, and the full dictionary in bound volumes followed immediately. William Shakespeare is the most-quoted writer in the completed dictionary, with Hamlet his most-quoted work. George Eliot is the most-quoted female writer. Collectively, the Bible is the most-quoted work; the most-quoted single work is Cursor Mundi.
Higher density living is changing the way neighborhoods work in Canada
To contribute to this challenge, our research examines what we do and do not know about neighbors in densifying Canadian cities.
(Note: I sent the editor an email suggesting they invest in a copy of the Oxford English dictionary because "We do not use the US bastardized version of the English language")
In saying that, you are aware that #AmericanEnglish is, in many aspects, more original than British English b/c Noah Webster was so far ahead in his time in preparing his famous dictionary.
Also, have you had the change to place a full printed edition of Webster's next to the Oxford's Dictionary?
Even discounting the many neologisms, Webster has more than 1 million words, many more than Oxford's Dictionary or the German Duden.
#OTD in 1755. Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language is published in London.
Johnson's dictionary was not just a list of words with their meanings; it also included extensive quotations from various literary works to illustrate the usage of each word. It played a significant role in standardizing English spelling and usage, helping to establish a common linguistic framework for communication.
English schoolmaster, lexicographer and commentator on the usage of the English language H. W. Fowler was born #OTD in 1858.
He is notable for both A Dictionary of Modern English Usage and his work on the Concise Oxford Dictionary. In partnership with his brother Francis, beginning in 1906, he began publishing seminal grammar, style and lexicography books. via @wikipedia
I truly want you to vote today even if you're my ideological opposite. The collective spell of participatory governance is far too powerful for even fascists to corrupt entirely. I imagine wannabe authoritarians wilt a little every time society compells them to cast a ballot instead of them getting to bark an order to imposse their will. Going to the polls for wannabe authoritarians and their fans has to feel like a tiny defeat.
New entries! We're famously fond of time travel chez HDSF, so here's "changewar" (from 1958; associated with Fritz Leiber) and its synonym "timewar" (1950; with various specific associations):
British physician, natural theologian, lexicographer Peter Mark Roget was born #OTD in 1779. He is best known for publishing, in 1852, the Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases, a classified collection of related words. Roget's schema of classes and their subdivisions is based on the philosophical work of Leibniz, itself following a long tradition of epistemological work starting with Aristotle. Some of Aristotle's Categories are included in Roget's first class, "abstract relations".#dictionary
Florida’s Book-Banning Crusade Has Found Its Next Target: Dictionaries
A law signed by Ron DeSantis last year has led one school district to remove three publishers’ dictionaries, while another removed classics like Paradise Lost and East of Eden, for their descriptions of “sexual conduct.”
New HDSF entry! The SF cliché "food pill", something that has always been regarded as coming in the future (like jetpacks and flying cars). Examples from the 1880s (they eat them in "Moonland"!) onwards.
Time-travel fans: really nice HDSF antedating of "time track", once-favored synonym of the (now preferred) timeline, from 1942 to Edmond Hamilton in 1931 (and now earlier than timeline itself (1935)).