a wordwright dusted off his tomes and intoned thus: "A dictionary is a book that sets out some of the meanings given by users to some of the words of which the compiler was aware.
"It is not an authority on legislation." .................................. Yeeees, but my point is that once we allow ourselves to be moved away from simple words with simple meanings, then centuries of our history as a nation, with all of its ancient legal documents - such as Magna Carta, with all of the rights and responsibilities it laid down on our country - may as well be hauled to the city dump and burnt :( OK, I will accept that your's is probably *much* bigger than mine .. I'm talking dictionary here .. and I make no implied claim to be a 'wordwright' either, but my own small tome includes words such as *irony*, *black humour* (and even *provocative* .. LOL) and it can rightfully claim the great Oxford Dictionary as its ultimate source so, please, do not put it down so quite so casually. Even so, little books have changed the world, as we see it, beyond recognition - amongst them being the Christian's 'Holy Bible', Hitler's 'Mein Kampf', and the 'Collected thoughts of Chairman Mao Tse-Tsung' - these being just a few, and so you belittle them at your peril :) Just because it is 'little' and possibly even 'older' than many folk here, why do those things make it 'wrong' - or my post 'naive'? Trevor [email protected] wrote: > On Sat, 16 May 2009 20:12:34 +0100, Trevor > <[email protected]> wrote: > > >> This tickled my interest, so I dug out my trusty (Pocket Oxford) English >> dictionary, which defines .. >> > > [...] > > >> Or is that taking a much too simplistic approach? >> > > A dictionary is a book that sets out some of the meanings given by > users to some of the words of which the compiler was aware. > > It is not an authority on legislation. > > bjg > > > > ------------------------------------ > > Yahoo! Groups Links > > > > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
