Ginormous

You'll have to excuse... well, possibly this entire post. I'm breaking in a new ankle brace today, and it's making me cranky.

How's that for a disclaimer?

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The pointless photo, as usual, has nothing to do with the title. Or anything, really. Sorry, I just got back from (not) answering another weird nature question, and I think I may be even crankier now. Let's try again, but this time we'll stick to the reason for the title.

You've probably heard that ginormous is one of the words that's been added to the latest edition of the Merriam-Webster dictionary, along with sudoku, Bollywood, and a bunch of others. Google it yourself if for some reason you haven't already heard this very exciting "news" story. I'd be surprised if you hadn't, though. It's the kind of thing that gets picked up by almost every media source when they're looking for a quick and upbeat way to end the newscast.

I don't have a problem with that kind of in other news moment. I know it sounds like I do, but... cranky, remember?

I do, however, have a problem with the yearly guess-what-silly-thing-we're-doing-now press release from whatever dictionary company is feeling the loneliest. Or, more properly, I have a problem with the people who get sucked in by what's really nothing more than an advertising ploy.

Every time a list like this is released, anyone with the intelligence of a bucket of noodles can predict that SOMEONE in the media will get all indignant and start complaining about the end of the English language as we know it. That annoys me. It annoys me because these self-appointed arbiters of language appear to have no knowledge of how language actually works, and it annoys me because it implies that dictionaries are somehow supposed to be judge and jury as to what's acceptable or (urgh) proper in a language.

That may have been true in Dr. Johnson's day, but (in the world of English, at least) we left that all behind us the first time someone printed a definition of the word fuck, folks.

Now, I'm not saying that the average desk-reference dictionary doesn't exhibit clear signs of censorship, or at least of omission. It has to, unless you want your entire office taken up by dictionary. Things have to be left out, and the first things to go are either expletives (although I think more of them make it in nowadays for the sheer titillation factor. Who here hasn't looked up the naughty words right away when buying a new dictionary?) or ephemera. Words that likely won't be around long, I mean. Neologisms, casual slang, that sort of thing. When you haven't got room for a lot of words, you stick to the ones that people may actually want to look up two or three years down the road.

It makes sense.

That's why these look-at-me lists of new dictionary words are so pointless. They may make a few people more interested in the dictionary itself, they might possibly intrigue a word-nerd like Yours Blatheringly as a reflection of the current state of popular language... but for the most part they're just there to irritate people who think that English has already purchased the handbasket and is planning a very warm holiday.

I'm sorry, but people like that tend to piss me off.

Language is organic. It's used by living beings, and it acts like a living being. It adapts. It changes. It sends out pseudopods into new areas, and lets old usages atrophy. It isn't better or worse or whatever than in our great-grandparents' day; it just is. And as long as it's functional, it continues to be. When it stops functioning, it ceases to have a purpose and dies.

Language doesn't belong in a museum case.

I should get back to work, but let me just end by saying that yes, I have been known to use the word ginormous. I'm usually being silly when I do it, but there you are. Do I think it will remain in the dictionary? I'd guess not, but in the end it just depends on whether it proves to be useful. Either way, it's certainly not worth having a fit over. Ironic that I just did then, don't you think? Ah well, that's what you get when you cranky-post.