Defining Womyn (and Others)

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Dictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.

Samuel Johnson should be living at this hour; the English language has need of him. Though he was never at a loss for words, the great lexicographical drudge would probably be confounded to read the new Random House Webster's College Dictionary. It is bugled as "the New Definition of Dictionary," the "newest, biggest and best."

Newest, yes; biggest, yes -- for a college dictionary (180,000 entries). As for best, it may be said that this dictionary goes like Dr. Johnson's watches. It will also tick off a lot of people.

Those who believe dictionaries should not merely reflect the times but also protect English from the mindless assaults of the trendy will find that the Random House Webster's lends authority to scores of questionable usages, many of them tinged with "politically correct" views. Purists will fume, but what is worse is that such permissiveness can only invite a further tattering of the language -- and already has.

At its core, the Random House Webster's is a laudable achievement, the work of many excellent minds. It is in the core's wrapping that trouble lies and English suffers erosion, mainly because the editors choose to be "descriptive, not prescriptive." As a result, numerous entries and usage notes, wafting in the sociological winds and whims of the day, are inconsistent and gratuitous, undermining any pretense of rigor, let alone authority.

Most notable in these pages is the influence of special-interest groups, prominently feminists and minorities. They are saluted, and placated, to the point where judgment is often skewed, and where tin-eared or casually invented words and terms are given approval simply because they are fashionable. "We tried our best," says executive editor Sol Steinmetz in justification, "to infuse some social significance into the language along the lines of what sociolinguists do."

An added essay, Avoiding Sexist Language, offers some useful gender-neutral suggestions (firefighter instead of fireman). Yet browsers will find as well the stamp of acceptance on the dreadful herstory ("an alternative form to distinguish or emphasize the particular experience of women"); the execrable womyn ("alternative spelling to avoid the suggestion of sexism perceived in the sequence m-e-n"); and the absurd wait-person (waiter or waitress) and waitron ("a person of either sex who waits on tables"). Future lexicons, perhaps, will give us waitoid (a person of indeterminate sex who waits on tables).

Straining even more to avoid giving offense, except to good usage, the < dictionary offers comfort to very short people (though not very tall ones) with heightism ("discrimination or prejudice based on a person's stature, esp. discrimination against short people"); and to very fat people (but not very thin ones) with weightism ("bias or discrimination against people who are overweight"). Omitted, fortunately, are such high-fad content terms as lookism (bias against people because of their appearance), ableism (bias against the handicapped) or differently abled (alternative to handicapped).