Date: Tue, 28 Oct 1997 07:49:21 -0500 From: Robert Ness Subject: Re: PC Dictionaries? Eric Pertridge's Usage and Abusage, sold well into the 1980's,has this entry:"nigger belongs only, and then in contempt or fun, to the dark-skinned African races and their descendants in America and the West Indies. Its application to the native people of India is ignorant and offensive." Burchfield describes at length (in Unlocking the English Language,1989, p.113) his problems over citing the word jew used as a verb, as in "to jew down" in the OED Supplement. The answer of course is to list the word, and mark it as derogatory or offensive or whatever. On Mon, 27 Oct 1997, Dennis Baron wrote: > Actually I did a local interview on one of the tv stations and I mentioned exactly what Jesse said, that all the major dictionaries had the same definitions, and all had appropriate usage warnings and labels. The furor started when an article in the Sept. issue of Emerge magazine, which I haven't seen yet, said that the m-w collegiate defined the word as black person and gave nothing to indicate it was a derogatory usage. This decontextualized reference to the def. then escalated. > > > Dennis > > _____ > > Dennis Baron, Acting Head phone: 217-333-2390 > > Department of English fax: 217-333-4321 > > University of Illinois email: debaron[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uiuc.edu > > 608 S. Wright Street http://www.english.uiuc.edu/baron > > Urbana, IL 61801 >