![]() We now have “not interested”, for instance, as another meaning for “disinterested”. In the Shorter Oxford, disregard of useful distinctions is noted and erosions of meaning are recorded, not bemoaned. Language pedants should here control their trichotillomania (compulsive desire to pull out one's hair). Instead, they aim to give us standard or typical English. They have dropped any lingering hold that ideas of correctness or propriety had on Murray. On the one hand, the present generation of Oxford editors is admirably permissive. Although the gap between spoken and printed vocabulary has narrowed since James Murray began his monumental work in an Oxford garden shed nearly 120 years ago, it has by no means closed. But it brings up the shifting links between spoken and written-or rather, published-language. Shorn of context and often cryptically cut down, written citations like this risk giving both too much information and too little. But it tells you neither that he was Harry Truman's secretary of state, nor where or when he wrote the quoted words. You can check in a list of authors at the back that the writer was indeed Dean Gooderham Acheson (1893-1971). Acheson is cited for expecting a “wigging for sloppy work”. This practice can turn citations into literary quizzes. Unlike in the big OED, written citations tell us who used a word, not where or when (Shakespeare, the Bible, Milton and Spenser excepted). Squeezing all that in has come at a price. The publishers claim that the new Shorter Oxford covers a third of the content of the 20-volume work in a tenth of the size. The technical and scientific range of this dictionary is daunting. Nor are words from Asia and Africa ignored. And not just British English: spelling aside, the Shorter Oxford is thoroughly American as well. But this is also a remarkably sharp-eared guide to the vocabulary of living English. This historical approach, for which the Oxford English dictionaries are famous, makes some readers smell dust. For common or important words, the editors have sought the earliest written use and traced later shifts in meaning by way of published citations. Historical principles combine with up-to-dateness. Some of the best have the snap of a good aphorism. As before, the style of the definitions-there are more than 500,000 of them-is pointed and crisp. Quotations are highlighted in grey, making for an easier read. The most immediately noticeable difference is a freer and friendlier layout. ![]() The fifth, which now replaces that 1993 dictionary, has all its strengths and some more of its own, but one or two minor faults as well. In its brief life, this was probably the best two-volume dictionary of English. ![]() Four years later, OUP brought out a masterly condensation, the fourth edition of the Shorter Oxford. That work reflected not just an immense labour of updating, but also the adoption of a more inclusive view of the dictionary-maker's task than had guided earlier editors. In essence the new Shorter Oxford is an abridgement of the revised 20-volume“Oxford English Dictionary” and its supplements, which was published by Oxford University Press ( OUP) in 1989. Churidars, by the way, are tight trousers, one of many Indian words that have found their way into English. At around seven pounds a volume, it's also good for those pecs. Browsing in their latest verbal treasurehouse is not only a welcome escape. EXHAUSTED by 24-hour newzak, anxious about asymmetrical warfare? Due for regime change after too many mochaccinos now those churidars don't fit? These are just four of roughly 3,500 new entries that dictionary-makers in Oxford have licensed as part of standard English.
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