Quoth Brian Holtz: ----- WordNet? LOL. There are two authoritative dictionaries -----
authoritative, adjective: 1. a. having or proceeding from authority b. showing evident authority 2. Dictatorial (Source -- Merriam-Webster, just to keep you happy). None of which says anything about accuracy ... BUT Merriam-Webster DOES reflect the governmental context of the word "censor." I don't know about the OED, since I don't have a copy (I've been wanting to get one, though). Your "second-tier" designated American Heritage Dictionary also reflects that context. ----- (WordNet doesn't even call itself a "dictionary", but rather a "lexical database".) ----- lexical: 1. of or relating to words or the vocabulary of a language as distinguished from its grammar and construction 2. of or relating to a lexicon or to lexicography (Merriam-Webster) lexicon: 1. a book containing an alphabetical arrangement of the words in a language and their definitions: dictionary (Merriam-Webster) database: a usually large collection of data organized especially for rapid search and retrieval (as by a computer) (Merriam-Webster) If something calls itself a "lexical database," it's calling itself a dictionary. The purpose of the original Princeton University WordNet is "to produce a combination of dictionary and thesaurus that is more intuitively usable, and to support automatic text analysis and artificial intelligence applications." Presumably that's also the purpose of the new WordNet which the producers of the OED are working on. ----- When I say "the dictionary", I'm almost always referring to M-W, but sometimes to OED or American Heritage (which is Yahoo's choice). When I say "the dictionary", I am never referring to WordNet. ----- When you say "the dictionary definition," you are always referring to "a dictionary definition" that you prefer -- and often you are referring to "a dictionary definition" that you only prefer if you can strip the context from it to make it mean something other than what it obviously means. It's a nice trick if you can pull it off. However, I reserve a portion of my leisure schedule for the purpose of ensuring that you can't. Best regards, Tom Knapp
