Snape! Snape! Snape! Snape! Loverly Snape! Wonderful Snape! (long)

[kkersey_austin]

No: HPFGUIDX 148241

< snipping everthing up to the point where Shaun hauls out the OED and
slams it on the table... [1]>

> It's time for the big guns - the Oxford English Dictionary. Not the 
> concise, not the abridged - the big one.  This is the closest thing 
> we have in the English language to a definitive dictionary.

< once again snipping the supporting evidence, up to this endorsement
from Wikipedia: >

> "The OED is the starting point for much scholarly work regarding 
> words in English."
 
Now Elisabet chimes in:

Shaun, I couldn't agree with you more about the OED being one terrific
reference source, and it certainly is the *starting* point for much
scholarly research. Depends on what kind of research you're doing,
though; for etymological and historical data you can't beat it. But,
but, but - 

Well, here's an article by Michael Quinion, a researcher who collects
evidence of new usage for the OED, addressing the question of the
authority of the OED, and of dictionaries in general:
http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/howdowords.htm

Read the whole thing, but here is a sample:

"In the world of today's lexicography, usage is king. We are, in the
language of the business, descriptive dictionary makers: we record, we
collate, we analyse, and we describe what people actually say and
write. If enough English speakers decide that some word or phrase has
value...then it is put into new editions. Not always very
quickly....if enough speakers decide that a word no longer means what
the dictionaries say it means but something else entirely, then we
have to note that, too. You may feel that such changes amount to
misuse—and certainly terms do change because of ignorance or
misunderstandings—but that's largely irrelevant to the job of the
dictionary maker.

"This standpoint is sometimes misunderstood, and as often disliked.
People who consult dictionaries most commonly want the tablets of the
law, not a mirror to language."

My points being: 1) Dictionaries respond to changes in usage; 2)
generally they do so slowly; 3) the dictionary definition derives its
authority from its ability to conform to usage, not the other way
around. In short, I'm with the descriptivists. 

Much as I love the OED, it's a great place to start, not always a
great place to end your research. And as Michael Quinion noted, it is
not a "tablet of law", particularly for current usage. The chief
editor himslef explicitly cautions against the myth of the dictionary
being the final arbiter of "proper English" in the preface to the
Third Edition. [2]

In a previous post, you insisted that the "precise" definition of
sadism requires that the perpetrator experience some degree of sexual
pleasure - well, sure, I'll grant you that *if* the word is being used
in a psychiatric context. But it wasn't. It was being used in
colloquial conversation by a writer with no medical training that I've
ever heard of. And come to think of it - to be more *precise*, she
didn't use the word "sadism", she used the word "sadist".

So, once again, the OED definition of "sadist":  "...more generally,
someone who derives satisfaction from inflicting pain or asserting his
or her power over others." 

Satisfaction? Sounds like Snape to me, on any number of occasions. 


Now I'm going to veer off-course and bring up the way JKR used a
certain word in a book, as opposed to an off-the-cuff interview remark. 

Despite Arthur Levine's dictionary-citation defense [3], I still have
a problem with "fug" being left on a window in HBP Ch3. "Fog" would
work fine in that sense, but has "fug" *ever* been used anywhere else
to mean condensed vapor? Not saying it hasn't, but as far as I can
tell, e.g. by searching on news.google, it is always used to described
a close, smokey or stinky atmosphere - e.g. that of a smoke-filled
tavern. It's a great word, but surely there was a better place to use
it - perhaps at the Hogshead. 

Incidentally, the OED definition of "fug" is "A thick, close, stuffy
atmosphere, esp. that of a room overcrowded and with little or no
ventilation", and alternatively indoor football. No citations come
close to using it to refer to anything that could form on a window,
but then, there's no mention at all of the widespread usage of the
word as a euphemism for - well, I'm sure most of you can figure that
one out.  ;-)

One other thing, while the OED is still sitting on the table here:
definitions are in *chronological* order, not in the typical
most-to-least common usage order you find in most dictionaries. It's a
historical dictionary. More about that here: http://www.oed.com/about

OK, I'll stop now...

Elisabet, who intended to stay out of the dictionary wars [4] but
couldn't help herself

[1] Yeah, I know it's currently only published electronically or in a
20 volumme set, either of which is hard to slam on a table. Grant me
some poetic license here. :-) 

[2] http://www.oed.com/about/oed3-preface/distractions.html

[3] http://www.arthuralevinebooks.com/faq.asp

[4] c.f. the hugely entertaining essay by David Foster Wallace:
http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/DFW_present_tense.html
(Well, *I* had fun reading it, but then I grew up in a family of
SNOOTS myself. And for those not familiar with DFW, don't skip the
footnotes or you'll miss everything.)