By Mary Williams
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Almost 250 years ago, Samuel Johnson turned nine years of
painstaking research into “A Dictionary of the English
Language,” the first thorough collection of words in the
English vocabulary.
And somehow, he neglected to include “gaydar.”
This corrigendum has been rectified at last,
however, with the inclusion of the word in this year’s
“Random House Webster’s College Dictionary.”
A slang term such as this may not seem at home in the dusty,
stuffy book of the savant, but as the English
language has evolved, so has the dictionary.
“At least 10 percent of the vocabulary is slang, and
that’s the part of our vocabulary that we use the most
often,” said Carol Braham, senior editor for Random House
Webster’s Dictionaries, in a phone interview from her New
York office.
Since the first edition of Johnson’s two-volume work was
published in 1755, dictionaries have become the refuge of people
searching for succor in their quest for a larger
vocabulary.
Today, lost college students use dictionaries to understand
recondite textbooks or interpret enigmatic
lectures. They have become an indubitable source
in understanding new and old English words.
“(Words) become obsolete but we leave in certain archaic
and obsolete words because you may be reading a book that talks
about this word, maybe Jane Austen or Shakespeare or something, and
you need these “¦ words. Then sometimes expressions like
“˜cat’s meow’ or other old expressions reenter the
language,” said Braham.
As for the new words, many are either created from older words,
borrowed from other languages, or, in some cases, created
completely independently.
“Words like “˜dork‘ and
“˜barf‘ and things like that ““ as
far as I know those were words that were just made up,” said
Russell Schuh, a UCLA professor of linguistics.
In some cases, new words are formed by dividing or rearranging
the parts of other words.
Schuh gave the example of words that mimic the form and meaning
of “marathon,” which have become accepted even though
they are made using a technically incorrect method.
“We can actually create morphemes out of
stuff we’ve already got, so now in English we have a suffix,
“˜-athon,'” Schuh said. “You can have a
talkathon or a workathon or a jogathon, and that comes from
Marathon, which was actually a place name in Greece. It
doesn’t break down into “˜mar’ plus
“˜athon’ at all. Somehow the notion grew that you could
break it down into more than one part.”
Braham said that several words included in the “Random
House Webster’s Dictionary” have been adapted from
other words in this way.
“The way that words are formed is interesting. From the
word alcoholic, we added workaholic, chocoholic, and now we have
shopaholic. Language tends to be creative that way. We downsize a
person, we upsize them and we rightsize the staff. Language is just
a creative process,” she said.
According to Schuh, many of these new words will disappear after
their initial popularity passes. Slang words can be temporary, and
many new words fall out of favor.
“You just never know,” Schuh said. “We
can’t talk about the slang they used in the 1920s because we
don’t know what they were saying because some of it died out,
but some of it lived on. There are some words like
“˜fun’ and “˜jazz,’ and those were slang
words just made up at the time they were created, and they lived
on. But there are thousands and thousands of words of that type
that either sound old-fashioned or they’ve just been
forgotten.”
The constant influx of new words and the uncertain future of
many existing words helped motivate Johnson to undertake a project
like the first English dictionary.
In the preface to the dictionary, Johnson expressed
disappointment that his work only reflected the vocabulary of his
day, and that inevitably that vocabulary would change.
“Those who have been persuaded to think well of my design,
require that it should fix our language, and put a stop to those
alterations which time and chance have hitherto been suffered to
make in it without opposition,” he wrote. “With this
consequence I will confess that I flattered myself for a while; but
now begin to fear that I have indulged expectations which neither
reason nor experience can justify.
“When we see men grow old and die at a certain time one
after another, from century to century, we laugh at the elixir that
promises to prolong life to a thousand years; and with equal
justice may the lexicographer be derided, who being able to produce
no example of a nation that has preserved their words and phrases
from mutability, shall imagine that his dictionary can embalm his
language, and secure it from corruption and decay, that it is in
his power to change sublunary nature, or clear the world at once
from folly, vanity, and affectation.”
Johnson’s dictionary did not have the ability to stop the
English language from evolving, which undoubtedly frustrated
Johnson and others who wanted to save it from the corruption of new
words.
“There has always been a lot of fear that language will
get out of our hands. By its very nature, language changes, and I
think there are a lot of people who don’t want it to
change,” said Charles Lynn Batten, an associate professor of
English and undergraduate vice chancellor at UCLA.
Not only have the words in the dictionary changed, but the
method by which the dictionary is written has also undergone a
major overhaul.
While Johnson worked virtually alone and gathered extensive
examples from literature as he compiled his words, modern
dictionaries are written by a committee.
Braham explained that at Random House, a database of words is
compiled and then narrowed down by a committee. Next, definitions
for those words are written, and then they are circulated among the
editors.
Johnson’s method resulted in a personal dictionary, which
includes many definitions that reflect his opinions and political
views and opens with a preface that explains his toils.
His entry for “patron” reads, “One who
countenances, supports or protects. Commonly a wretch who supports
with indolence and is paid with flattery.”
“Random House Webster’s Dictionary” gives a
milder version: “A person who is a customer, client, or
paying guest, esp. a regular one, of a store, hotel or the
like.”
Some other of Johnson’s definitions contained prejudice
jokes, the likes of which are not seen in today’s
dictionaries.
“He hated Scots so he’s got the wonderful definition
of “˜oats’ in which he implies it’s for Scotsmen
and horses,” Batten said. “I think he kind of glories
in his own sort of prejudicial views here. He throws in some jokes
and the kinds of things that most of us can’t use in a
so-called serious document like a dictionary.”
Serious or not, the dictionary has developed from an attempt to
restrain the language to a marker of new and old, slang and formal
words.
With reports from Antero Garcia, Daily Bruin Senior Staff.