| > I share your dislike for a central language authority, but I think there are non-authoritative solutions that are consistent with the missions and practices of dictionaries. There are well-tested solutions. One is to have a language authority such as you suggest above, like the Académie française, which struggles against what it regards as erosions and distortions of proper French: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acad%C3%A9mie_fran%C3%A7aise Another is simply to list definitions in the order of their contemporary preference, as dictionary.com does. Interestingly, Merriam-Webster uses the reverse order, listing the oldest definitions first, as in the case of "Decimated", which once meant reduced by one tenth but now means substantially destroyed: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/decimate http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/decimated Note the difference in listing order. > One possibility: dictionaries could report that a large fraction of English experts or teachers consider a particular usage incorrect. Apart from the problem of choosing experts, I think this would only slow the natural rate of language evolution. I think the problem is deeper -- it asks whether language is (or should be) susceptible to evolution by means of natural selection as people's tastes and needs change. |