Conference thebay::joyoflex

    NEW YORK - Random House officially trotted out its new Webster's
    College Dictionary Tuesday (although the book has been available in
    some markets since May). The editors chose some 180,000 entries,
    including several hundred words and phrases that weren't in the 1987
    edition. Here's a sampling:
    
    � chill: in addition to what one does to wine, chill also can refer to
    relaxation ("chill out")
    
    � Def: as in excellent
    
    � dissing: showing disrespect for anyone
    
    � herstory: women's history
    
    � homeboys: a person from the same locality as oneself; a close friend
    
    � jocks: athletes or computer jocks
    
    � love handles: the cutesy name for the bulges at the sides of one's
    waist. Those who use a less flattering term might be accused of
    "weightism" (bias against the overweight)
    
    � mall rats: people who hang out in malls
    
    � outing: (more than a picnic) the intentional exposure of a secret
    homosexual, especially a prominent figure
    
    � play date: an appointment made by parents to have their children play
    together
    
    � virus: as in computer
    
    � white-bread: disparaging, pertaining to the white middle class
    
    � wimps: ineffectual, timid people of any gender. (Not to be confused
    with WIMP: "Weakly Interacting Massive Particle.")
    
    � womyn: an alternative spelling to avoid the suggestion of sexism
    perceived in the sequence m-e-n.
    

    	>> herstory: women's history

		I suppose we'll have to wait for the next edition
		to officialise the word I heard in the mouth of 
		the Mayor of NY [Dinkins?] in relation to those 
		Gulf War soldiers who happened to be womyn:  
				SHEroes.

		With individual syllables being gender-purged,
		isn't this whole thing now getting really silly?





		How much longer before a female `person' becomes 
		`perdaughter'?

		Any others?











    

	HERCULES
	Silly name ! Obviously should be HISCULES.

	HERPES
	Incredibly arrogant. We, the myn, are entitled to
	our own HISPES.

	HERON
	This noun simply negates the existence of the male animal.
	We should demand the addition of HISON.

	HISPANIC 
	Come on, don't womyn panic as well ?  The word HERPANIC must
	be added (it's certainly as good as herstory)

	Cheers,
	roger

    	As a result of recent discussion with a colleague we believe that
    FEMALEDICTION should be added. If this is shouted at you by someone
    FEMALEVOLENT (this obviously means flying on a broomstick) you will
    probably turn into a frog.

    And of course a marriage breakup is not a divorce. It is a 
    schism and schersm.

    Normally, a schism and schersm is not influenced by heredity
    or hisedity.

                This is getting really silly, so I feel safe
                in throwing in (for the Brits only I think)
                the following:

                What is the name of Mantovani's wife?






                Why, Womantovani, of course!


                Which reminds me .. if women is now womyn,
                what is woman?  Please, not woperson.  Because
                that just has to become woperdaughter .....

    Perhaps in addition to the gender-free term "whine", we should have
    the gender-specific "whene", for something men do so very well.
    
    						Ann B.

    re: .-*
    
    I think I'm getting a sheadacshe!
    
    Wook

    	I was thinking of starting an It Recognition Society (IRS). Itstory
    is a much more comfortable word than prehistory or preherstory, and
    could be applied to recent events like the erruption of Krakatoa. The
    only thing preceding itstory would be godstory.
    
    	Then I became aghimated (I'm male) about the implications. While a
    homosexual couple raising a child might be delighted to have the words
    mothim and fathim, and while many cartoon characters could be described
    as itsos and itsoines (are you *sure* you know the sex of R2D2 or
    Bugs Bunny?) I decided she was rather over the top. Dropping "sister"
    from the language in favour of "brothim" and "brother" would make much
    of English lhimerature unintelligible, though I think I would prefer
    the term "brothit" to "sibling".

    >Dropping "sister" from the language in favour of "brothim" and
    >"brother" would make much of English lhimerature unintelligible,
    >though I think I would prefer the term "brothit" to "sibling".
    
    Perhaps the better term would be "sishim."  Then we could refer to
    the head of the family unit as the "sishim engineer."
    
    --bonnie

>    � womyn: an alternative spelling to avoid the suggestion of sexism
>    perceived in the sequence m-e-n.
 
	
	So what is the alternative spelling for abdomen ? examen ?
	hymen ? Tien-An-Men ?

	Thanks

    ... and what is the alternative for the "amen" at the end of a prayer?

    
    "examen"?

    Don't you mean "examine"?

>    ... and what is the alternative for the "amen" at the end of a prayer?

awomen... preceded of course by both hymns and herns.

John

>    "examen"?

	Oops, you're right. I withdraw "examen" which is not current 
	in English. It's the French word for "exam" (actually I wouldn't 
	be surprised if the latter was an abbreviation of the former, I'll
	have to check).

	Cheers,
	roger

    re: .12
    	"sishim" is explixitly sexist, so would certainly not be allowed.
    The politically correct term would be "sistit engineer". I still prefer
    "brothit" for the general case, and maybe "brothem engineer" as an
    alternative term for "parent".

  I don't mind the whining so much.  But you should all understand that
  people will be put off by the stridency of these complaints.

  JP

    re: .18
    
    This is tricky.   I thought that combining the feminine "sis" with
    the masculine "him" would yeild a unisex noun -- or at least a
    bisexual one.
    
    I like "brothem engineer" for parents, though.  Such an impressive
    title.
    
    --bonnie

    `Regimen' offends on two counts.  What did Elizabeth I have?
    
    b

	Ref: .19


>>  I don't mind the whining so much.  But you should all understand that
>>  people will be put off by the stridency of these complaints.

		Just to clarify your point, John .....
		which people will be put off what and why?

		Jim

  Jim,

  Why, the people whom y'all hope to convince that such dictionary
  additions� are sowing the seeds of destruction for Western
  Civilization.  "Strident" and is variations is often used as
  a put-down in discussions about feminism... you can probably
  guess which way that put-down is usually pointed.

  I erred, as I often do, in not directing the humor-impaired to insert
  smiley faces wherever they think appropriate.

  I think I'm generally in favor of dictionary modifications that increase 
  the size of the lexicon.  If I didn't delight in shades of meaning and
  wordplay/spellplay, why would I read this file?  I get much more irate
  over reductions in the lexicon, e.g., the disappearance of the distinction
  between "ensure" and "insure."

  � E.g., "womyn," even if it's a separate entry rather than
    an alternate spelling of "women."

  JP

	John, thanks for your explanation.  I *thought* I knew
	to what you were referring, but didn't like to assume.

	As for convincing anybody of anything; I cannot talk 
	for others in here, but my view is as follows:

	There is a lot of gender-specific language that doesn't 
	reflect the actual and potential place of women in
	society.  Such language should be done away with.  So,
	for example, I prefer, and use, words which recognise 
	that either sex could be meant (such as `salesperson', 
	`chair', and `they'  - replacing `his or her').


	But I fail to see what positive effects words like 
	`womyn' or `herstory' are supposed to achieve.

	Jim

    Well, the original objection to woman, is that it produced a
    visualization of half the human race as being some distorted
    subset of the other half.  Wo-man as some kind of defective man.
    The root of woman (It says here in the AHD.) is wif-man, where
    "wif" means woman.  So, the implication is that male humans are
    The Real Thing, and us other kind are Imitations.
    
    Herstory is different.  It's a way of underlining that what we
    learned in school as history is his-story:  the male view of what
    happened that was important and why it was important.  The term
    "herstory" refers to those buried facts that history considered
    unimportant, but that women (and especially womyn) don't.
    
    						Ann B.

    None of the following has any bearing on what these words mean to
    us today . . . but I guess it relates to how words change: 
    
    Wif-mon didn't exactly mean "woman" to the Old English speakers
    who coined it in the same way it means "woman" to us.  Something
    like "keeper-person" would be a more accurate rendition of the way
    it's used in the Old English writings.  
    
    Other 'wif' compounds are 'huswif' and 'ale-wif'; in at least one
    case the alewife is clearly a person of the male sex.  Presumably
    the keeper-person's identification as female reflects the social
    role.
    
    In very early English writings, 'mon' probably really was
    gender-neutral.  There's a poem in which the classic reference to
    "thot mon who ne mourne" (not spelled right) for his lost country
    and lost lord is a woman who'd been taken captive in battle.  
    
    When they wanted to refer to a person of the male sex, they used
    'wir' ('were', as in 'werewolf') derived from the Latin 'vir',
    man.  
    
    And the "man" in "human" is not the same man as the man in
    "woman."  The man in human is part of the Latin word 'humanus' and
    not a compound at all. 
    
    --bonnie

  I take delight in many of these new words exactly because they
  provide more shades of meaning.  That these different shades
  are very important to some people for good reason (as Ann points 
  out in .25) is by itself be enough for me to support their use.

  I would also point out that those who rail against such language
  extensions seem to be taking up the (religious) argument that a
  dictionary should be prescriptive rather than descriptive.  And
  while I don't mean to deprecate anyone's religion, the prescriptive
  approach seems to me unenforceable and therefore doomed to failure.

  JP

Five years ago, this conference had a serious discussion on the topic. 

See 143.* "Is Man Sexist"

My favorite extract: 

>...Words have gender, people do not. People have sex, words do not.

So, unless Ann has significantly changed her position, there's not much
more to say.

I do like the punsters (and weirdos who generally contribute to this
conference) line of thinking (albeit demented) when they hear "Womyn" and
"Herstory" have been introduced to the language.

  I love it when people place a bombshell such as "demented" (which
  is explosive only in the context of a topic such as this one) with 
  absolutely no warning or subsequent explanation...it made my day.

  JP

To a deconstructionist, the fact that "human" and "history" have no 
etymological relation to "man" and "his" is completely immaterial.

-dave

    To replace the incorrect fragment with the correct frag???t, instead
    of wo-man, it should be wo-woman, er, wo-wo-wo-wo-wo-
    Now, what does this do to the English language?  It sounds to me like
    a rolling access violation.  And it only applies to fe-fe-fe-fe-
    
    It is interesting to note that, to avoid sexist discrimination,
    John's wife cannot keep her own name.  Only by taking his name
    can she achieve parodi.

  re. 27

>  I would also point out that those who rail against such language
>  extensions seem to be taking up the (religious) argument that a
>  dictionary should be prescriptive rather than descriptive.  And

	The prescriptive vs. descriptive argument is more adapted
	to a discussion on the role of grammar. Lexicon is a completely
	different part of language.

	Most people expect that a dictionary should contain a list of 
	commonly accepted words, with their _proper_ (commonly accepted) 
	spelling; it should be both descriptive and prescriptive.

	Of course, there's nothing wrong with adding new words to a 
	lexicon, and this happens in all living languages. The Larousse
	dictionary, for example, adds ca 1000 words every year, and removes
	about as many obsolete ones.  

	A good general-purpose dictionary will add a word, or an alternative 
	spelling, only when it is acceptable by a large part of the population.
	Words that belong to specialized language (technical jargon, slang...)
	should be mentioned as such.
	
	I wonder if the new issue of Webster's, as described in .1, is
	really careful in that respect. Adding "herstory" looks like 
	an affirmative, voluntarist move, rather than a recognition
	of a linguistical fact. 
	
	I'll stick with my old Harrap's for a while :)

	Cheers,
	roger

  Gee, I've never thought of Parodihood as an achievement...it's just
  something that sort of happens.  But thank you.  As a matter of fact, 
  Alison took both available names and used the European (or is it 
  only Dutch?)  convention of "maiden" (gulp) name last.  So she's 
  a Parodi-Bieling.

  I'm not sure the result is discrimination, though it is annoying.
  On the rare occasions you find a bureaucrat who's heard of hyphenated 
  names, they almost always say that my last name should come last and 
  thus her proper name should be Bieling-Parodi.

  This is discrimination only in the sense that such rudeness, 
  ignorance, and officiousness would probably not be tolerated by 
  men if they were the ones who tradionally changed names for marriage.

  JP

    In the midwestern US, the old custom was that when a woman
    married, she dropped the middle name she had been given at birth
    (which she usually hates anyway :) ), replaced it by her own birth
    surname, and took on her husband's surname.  Thus Bonnie Jean
    Randall became Bonnie Randall Schutzman.  (No hyphens.) The custom
    had been dying out, but in the recent mailings from my high school
    class reunion committee it appears that most of the married women
    with professional careers have resumed the old style. 
    
    It was a way to trace family on both sides.  You could tell by
    looking who both sides of the family were -- and it wasn't
    uncommon to find many boys who had their mother's maiden name as
    their middle name.  I suspect that the tiny population spread out
    over the vast area had something to do with it.  When there
    weren't any neighbors in 15 miles, it was important to feel
    connected to someone. 
    
    The hyphen was an English custom used when the bride's family had
    equal or greater social standing than the groom's -- as for when
    the youngest daughter of an earl married an untitled gentleman of
    good family.  Later in Victorian times some people started to view
    it as a sign of pretension.  (An aside: it was never uncommon for
    the man to take his bride's family name when a family's only
    offspring was a daughter, to keep the family name from dying out.)
    
    I notice that since I moved to the northeast, my name creates
    nothing but confusion.  I've had to explain it over and over and
    over again, and I've been told on more than one occasion to make
    sure and use my "real" middle name instead of "that one."   When
    the big push for hyphenated married names hit in the '70's, the
    publicity and so on created a lot of puzzlement at home, since
    nobody could figure out why they wanted to make such a big deal of
    a hyphen instead of a space.  At least now I understand why...
    
    --bonnie

Just to clarify a point, no legitimate dictionary has ever given its
"okay" to any word.  Not even once.  Dictionaries RECORD HOW WORDS ARE
BEING USED.  They DO NOT PRESCRIBE THE CORRECT WAYS TO USE WORDS.

Yes, I'm shouting.  If people use `womyn' then it's right for it to
appear in a dictionary.  But that appearance does not *sanction* that
word or its use.

Yeah, I know.  I'm beating a dead horse.  Nobody cares; they're all too
busy inventing words to replace the 10 or 20 million we've already got.

:-)

-d

	Ref 88.35 

	>>  If people use `womyn' then it's right for it to
	>>  appear in a dictionary.  

	So the word `flourescent' should appear?  Based
	on my observation, that alternative spelling of
	`fluorescent' is *far* more common than `womyn'
	for `women'.  But it is used, and its meaning 
	is clear.   So, bung it in the dictionary! Why
	not!! 

    There is to my mind a significant distinction between the deliberate
    use of an altered word, such as `womyn,' and a simple mistake in
    spelling, such as `flourescent,' which latter malformation is due to
    the user's lack of care, education, or spelling ability (this last to
    include learning disabilities).
    
    As it happens, I personally think rather little of `womyn' - but
    language is mutable to serve the purpose of communication, and I admit
    freely that `womyn' communicates a sensibility that `women' does not
    impart.
    
    -d

re .36

Of course 'flourescent' should appear in the dictionary, if enough
people use it.  It's a good thing you told us about it, though.  If you
hadn't mentioned what it meant, I would have assumed it described the
phenomenon of turning into a fine white powder, perhaps like Lot's wife.

re several early replies

'Woman' --> 'Woperson' --> 'Woperdaughter'.  No, that last step is wrong.
It should be           --> 'Woperchild'.

Dave C.

    	My impression from notes files is that the spelling "thier" is
    almost as common as "their" and there is a traditional English spelling
    rule "'I' before 'E' except after 'C'" so it is arguably more correct.
    I expect to see it in dictionaries soon.

    Re: .39
    
    Your citation of the I/E rule is incomplete. 
    
    	I before E
    	Except after C,
    	Or when sounded like A,
    	as in "neighbor" and "weigh."
    
    I think you'll find that "their" fits the latter category.  Sorry, no
    argument allowed, you didn't pay for one.  :-)
    
    -d

.40>    	I before E
.40>    	Except after C,
.40>    	Or when sounded like A,
.40>    	as in "neighbor" and "weigh."

I don't know about that rule.  I've always thought it rather weird.

	re .35

>Just to clarify a point, no legitimate dictionary has ever given its
>"okay" to any word.  Not even once.  Dictionaries RECORD HOW WORDS ARE
>BEING USED.  They DO NOT PRESCRIBE THE CORRECT WAYS TO USE WORDS.

   
	You obviously never played Scrabble, not even once  :)
	
	Cheers,
	roger

    	Where my wife comes from "their" is pronounced "zurr". The
    lengthened "r" is important to distinguish it from "there". I have
    never heard "weigh" pronounced as "wurgh". She dropped a lot of her
    accent at university, but I knew three of her grandparents.
    
    	To be fair and complete, "those" is usually pronounced as
    "zumzayre", and often put into writing as "them there". The preceding
    "them" obviously modifies the pronunciation of the following "there".

Re: .42

I play Scrabble.  The Scrabble Dictionary is not a dictionary.  If I
stretch a point, I can accept that it is a lexicon in that a lexicon can
be a vocabulary list; but a dictionary describes forms, meanings, and
usage - or, in the case of an interlanguage dictionary, translated
equivalents.  The Scrabble Dictionary does nto satisfy these criteria.
Calling it a dictinoary does not prove said appellation's correctness.

So *there*!  :-)

-d

    Re: .41
    
	.40>	I before E
	.40>    Except after C,
	.40>    Or when sounded like A,
	.40>    as in "neighbor" and "weigh."

	.41>	I don't know about that rule.  I've always thought
    	.41>	it rather weird.
    
    Yes.  The quoted rule is not complete.  The complete rule lists about
    six or eight exceptions to the rhyme quoted above.  "Weird" is one of
    them. So are words taken from German, such as weisenheimer.

    re: .44
    	I had never heard of a "Scrabble Dictionary".
    
    	What my Scrabble set has to say on the subject is "Tous les mots se
    trouvant dans n'importe quel dictionnaire g�n�ral sont permis, a
    l'exception des noms propres, ceux consider�s comme mots �trangers, les
    abbr�viations et les mots compos�s avec apostrophe ou trait d'union"
    
    	As a specialised dictionary a "Scrabble Dictionary" would be
    specifically excluded by the rules of the game. It may have some other
    use, though.
    
    	Part of the game is the foreplay in establishing your own
    dictionary as "general".

...is merely one more way to cash in on the popularity of Scrabble and
people's demand for "authority."  It is a list of about 20,000 words,
many of then abstruse, grouped by the number of letters they comprise
(hee, hee) and then, within each group, alphabetically.

I've never seen any except an American English edition, and I haven't
even seen one of those for at least 25 years.  The copy my mother had
was given the imprimatur of Selchow & Righter and published by Dell as a
trade papervback.

-d

Re:   <<< Note 88.47 by SMURF::CALIPH::binder "Simplicitas gratia simplicitatis" >>>

> ...is merely one more way to cash in on the popularity of Scrabble and
> people's demand for "authority."  It is a list of about 20,000 words,

> even seen one of those for at least 25 years.  The copy my mother had
> was given the imprimatur of Selchow & Righter and published by Dell as a

I have a paperback copy of the "Official Scrabble Dictionary".  I don't
remember who published it, could have been Dell.  I'll check when I get home.
It's about 5-10 years old.  I'm sure it has quite a bit more than 20,000 words.
More like 80,000.

Duncan.

    re: .45
    
    Neither weird leisure seized either foreign financier...
    
    At least, that's the sentence I learned it from
    
    - SteveT, who's_amazed_sometimes_at_the_trash_that's_retained
    

>    	As a specialised dictionary a "Scrabble Dictionary" would be
>    specifically excluded by the rules of the game. It may have some other
>    use, though.
 
	The official SCRABBLE dictionary is the only dictionary used
	in tournaments.  It was put together from as many dictionaries
	as the lexicographers could find, and included only those words
	you referred to above.  I couldn't imagine playing a serious
	game of SCRABBLE without it.
   
>    	Part of the game is the foreplay in establishing your own
>    dictionary as "general".

	Sounds kinky.

		-- C	

    Re .42
    
    It remains true that the dictionary doesn't prescribe how to use words.
    
    The instructions inside the Scrabble set prescribe how to use them.

To continue the rathole on the lexicons specified by various local
varients of Scrabble:

British editions of Scrabble specify the use of a specific default
dictionary (unless another is agreed to be the players).  I seem to
recall it is Chambers.  In any case, it is an old-established
dictionary and not a special scrabble word list.  Lists of British
English words ordered by number of letters are available for Scrabblers
but the acid test of acceptability is whether or not it is in the
dictionary (and not excluded by the Scrabble rules as foreign etc).

Jon

    .52�recall it is Chambers.  In any case, it is an old-established
    .52�dictionary and not a special scrabble word list.  Lists of British
    
    I think Chambers produce a book called Scrabble Words, which will be
    something like a dictionary but without all those tiresome definitions
    to wade through.
    
    Ian.