Date:  Tue, 28 Oct 1997 17:20:11 -0500
From:  "Jeutonne P. Brewer" <jpbrewer[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]HAMLET.UNCG.EDU>
Subject: <No subject given>

>From stygall[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]u.washington.edu Tue Oct 28 17:02:05 1997
>Subject: Re: PC Dictionaries?

>Jesse:
>You miss my point. There is nothing -- other than some very human
>decisions made by people like you -- that demands that a
>dictionary define by what you call what it "means." I don't think I or
>many other people would have any trouble figuring out what it "means" by
>starting with epithet. The Harper Collins CoBuild, for example, begins
>the definition of "nigger" with "a word . . ." Semantics remains the
>most
>slippery of the linguistic levels and yet you make it sound as if what it
>"means" is utterly transparent.
Gail

I suppose I have missed something, but I don't understand why you
propose "defining" by epithet rather than by "meaning." (I can't refer
back to your first message because I seem to have deleted.) What about
words/phrases that can't be handled adequately by epithet? Should the
dictionary use epithets for socially sensitive words but use word
"meanings" for other words.

I have an old dictionary at hand (1950s). Epithet is defined as
follows: "an adjective, noun, or phrase expressing some quality considered
characteristic of a person or thing: as, that _black-hearted_ villain"
I would rather have a definition, I think, rather than just the
epithet example used in the definition. I am still left with the
question of why/how an epithet would be preferable to a meaning.


Jeutonne


**********************************************
Jeutonne P. Brewer, Associate Professor
Department of English
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Greensboro, NC 27412
email: jpbrewer[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]hamlet.uncg.edu
URL:  http://www.uncg.edu/~jpbrewer
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