133
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] Sanctus@lemmy.world 41 points 1 year ago

Shouldn't the official word list just be the dictionary? Isn't that the point?

[-] loudambiance@sh.itjust.works 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Which dictionary? Merriam Webster added almost 700 "words" this year, including shit like: TTYL, finsta, bussin, cromulent, doggo, simp, goated, and more. I feel like they are slowly becoming urbandictionary.com.

[-] kakes@sh.itjust.works 47 points 1 year ago

I mean, their job is to provide definitions for the words people use in language, not to gatekeep what words are "good enough" to be defined.

I hear each of the words you've listed all the time, they're part of our language whether we like it or not.

[-] loudambiance@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago

My point was more about which dictionary do you use and less about the exact words added. Webster added them, but Oxford and American Heritage didn't.

[-] Maalus@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

Use all of em and if it appears in any it's a word

[-] kakes@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 year ago

Now I want to play a game of scrabble where you play a complete nonsense word, and your points are the number of Google results for that word - lowest points wins. And maybe you have 5 letters instead of 7.

[-] Sanctus@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I would rather be able to spell out bussin' for points than zzzz, aaa, or Mieropoix. At least it is a word people actually use in conversation.

[-] deegeese@sopuli.xyz 9 points 1 year ago

Mirepoix is an ordinary word in cooking, but it’s an uncountable noun and they’re inventing a fake plural, like “featherses”.

[-] Sanctus@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Didnt it specifically say horsefeatherses in one of those comments? I start drawing the line there.

[-] joel_feila@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I have never heard or seen mieropoix before.

[-] Texas_Hangover@lemm.ee 9 points 1 year ago

Cromulent is a perfectly cromulent word.

[-] merc@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago

Modern dictionaries are descriptive not prescriptive. They don't tell you how things should be spelled, or what meaning they should have. Instead, they report how things are spelled and what people think they mean in the real world.

[-] RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

I knew Meriiam Webster was going to shit when they added "literally" as "figuratively" because people use it facetiously.

[-] Ookami38@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

That's the point of it, though. People use "literally" as "figuratively, and it should be recorded as such. It doesn't matter that it's facetious or ironic, it's still used that way commonly.

this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2023
133 points (95.9% liked)

Mildly Interesting

17350 readers
83 users here now

This is for strictly mildly interesting material. If it's too interesting, it doesn't belong. If it's not interesting, it doesn't belong.

This is obviously an objective criteria, so the mods are always right. Or maybe mildly right? Ahh.. what do we know?

Just post some stuff and don't spam.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS