Heroes of the world of words

I should like to claim the credit for the Bloomsbury English Dictionary’s inclusion of the word carminative. It did not appear in the dictionary’s previous incarnation as the Encarta World English Dictionary in 1999, and I pointed out the omission at the time.

Perhaps finding that the words Encarta and World English did not sell dictionaries, the publishers are now selling a second edition in Britain under this nice new name, with ENGLISH in big capitals on the spine instead of ENCARTA. Unfortunately, many of its absurdities and errors have been retained. I wasn’t the only one who laughed at the first edition. The reviewer for the TLS mocked its definition of Oxford Movement as ‘a movement … that advocated a renewal of Roman Catholic doctrine and practice’. The risible definition remains.

So does the erroneous description of the little circle over an a, used in some Scandinavian languages, as an ‘angstrom’. An angstrom is a measure of length. An a with a little circle over it is used as an abbreviation of angstrom, but the little circle is not called ‘an angstrom’ any more than the letter m is called ‘a metre’, but rather ‘em’. The Encarta/Bloomsbury dictionary-makers were told all this five years ago.

Bloomsbury has slightly curtailed its ranting note on the word nigger. Previously it said, ‘Those who persist in using it should remember that their use of the word reflects directly on them, the users. The terms of choice are African American, Black or Black person and person of colour’. This year’s ‘term of choice’ is Black person, and nothing else. So watch it.

There is no point wasting more space on this ridiculous dictionary, distinguished neither by accuracy nor by good judgment. Both qualities were more difficult to apply to the rough, uncharted seas of English in 1746, when at the age of 37 Samuel Johnson began the single-handed task of compiling his great dictionary.