[Lexicog] archaic entries

[John Roberts]

Erin McKean asked:


> Did you look up the words "archaic" and "obsolete" in the A-Z?

Good point. That is where I started when I was looking for definitions of 
"archaic" and "obsolete". Collins English
 Dictionary (2005) has "archaic" in the A-Z and sense 3 says "(of idiom, 
vocabulary, etc.) characteristic of an earlier period of a language and not 
in ordinary use". So this is the definition of the technical term. On the 
other hand, CED's definition of "obsolete" seems to overlap with their 
notion of "old-fashioned" which they apply to "wireless", for example. Sense 
1 of "obsolete" in CED is "out of use or practise", but sense 2 says "out of 
date; unfashionable or outmoded". It is only sense 1 of "obsolete" that is 
usually applied to words in a dictionary.

CED doesn't seem to have a category of "obsolete", i.e. words no longer in 
current usage. I looked for some of the words marked (obs.) in other 
dictionaries and they weren't in CED. One I did find was drab2 "prostitute" 
and CED classifies it as "archaic". So CED appears to work with the 
categories of "archaic" and "old-fashioned" and anything "obsolete" as in 
sense 1 above is left out.

But the selling feature of CED is all the new words they have included,such 
as "chav", "chavette" and "chavtastic". I conclude they have off-loaded the 
"obsolete" to make way for the new.

By the way, I was in Blackwells bookshop in Oxford today and they have the 
20 volume Oxford English Dictionary 2nd edition on sale for £550, knocked 
down from £2000.

John Roberts





 
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