| | In discussing Ayn Rand's writing style as a philosopher, several SOLOists got on a tangent on dictionaries. I do not know that this will set the record straight. However, my opinions here are derived from my experience as a professional writer. They are also tempered by my close association with my wife, who is a professional proofreader.
1. The American Heritage Dictionary is for children. We call it "The Pictionary."
2. The only "Webster's" dictionary that we recognize is the Merriam-Webster. My wife stays current and we have several. I have the 7th and the 11th and I am happy. My wife considers Mirriam-Webster definitive and final for American English.
3. I rely on the Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language from WORLD Press. Being from Cleveland, I grew up with this as the hometown favorite and it has served me well over the last 40 years or so. It is not so much that the definitions are astounding, as that the etymologies are reliable. I believe that we "hear" words with the "back of the mind."
3a. I also have a facsimile edition of Noah Webster's 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language. It is helpful for understanding historical works, such as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
4. The so-called "Oxford" dictionaries must be evaluated independently. I have one such paperback, supposedly from the same people who publish the OED. In this case, my ppb is marked and corrected in about a dozen places, mostly noting, not that my definitions are "better" but that theirs are internally self-contradictory: words are used differently in different definitions.
5. No dictionary pretends to be an "authority" telling people what words "really" mean. Any dictionary only reports what the editors guess most people seem to mean by the way they use words according to context. I know that scares the living daylights out of people who demand objective reality from their authorities, but the fact is that words do not have "objective" meanings and certainly, no dictionary claims that, except perhaps the Ayn Rand Lexicon.
6. Weak writers cite "the dictionary" in their essays. According to the dictionary, capitalism is... According to the dictionary, freedom is... According to the dictionary, life is...
6.a. If you are using words that your audience does not know, you take on a special burden.
6.b. If you are using words in a special way that your audience does not know, you take on a special burden.
Typical examples of both of those cases include supply, demand, gravity, and force.
However, when a writer presents a forceful argument, no one expects that to mean "mass times the second derivative of the displacement vector" -- a correct definition of "force" not to be found in the common dictionaries.
6.c. If a writer is making a special point, seeking to establish some new truth, setting the baseline of understanding is helpful. Ayn Rand did a lot of that. It can also be helpful to prove that someone else is uninformed or ignorant or morally corrupt by showing that their use of some word is contrary to established usages. Ayn Rand did that, as well.
Over all, for all of the special knowledge that Ayn Rand imparted to us, her readers, and admirers, her reliance on "arguing the dictionary" was a weakness in her writing.
7. I highly recommend The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester. It is a story of the Oxford English Dictionary.
(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 3/13, 2:59pm)
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