Changing the Definition of Dictionary

A dictionary used to be the definitive definer of words for writers like me. Printed, unabridged, hardcover versions had jackets the size of bath towels, and were heavy enough to be used as murder weapons and cause hernias and sciatica. The worse thing you could say about a word someone used to insult you on the playground was “That’s not even in the dictionary.”

So you can imagine my surprise this week when I read that venerable purveyors of news, ranging from BBC News to Reuters to the Chicago Tribune, allegedly reported that the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) had just added the words twerk and selfie. That was so not true, slate.com said. Yes, they were added, not to the hulking Oxford English Dictionary (OED) that I once rented a U-Haul to transport during career moves, but to the Oxford Dictionaries Online (ODO), also from Oxford University Press (OUP?).

According to OUP, which sounds like something you’d exclaim while potty-training a two year old, the hipper ODO focuses on current English and includes modern meanings and uses of words. The OED, on the other hand, is a historical dictionary with core words and meanings in English that earned their place over more than 1,000 years, including many that are now obsolete and historical. Which makes me ask myself or anyone else who will listen: 1) Why should something that was “not even in the dictionary” yesterday be in it today? 2) Why did I have to haul around 1,000 years of words for years? (3) How long will it take for twerk, twerking and twerkalicious to become obsolete enough for the OED? (4) Do I need to write another diatribe about acronyms?