Embraced by the "lite"

[Jesse Sheidlower]

> I'd happily accept "informal" or "colloquial" (as below).  I just
> wonder whether such labels exempt a slang dictionary like the HDAS
> from listing an item, since the boundary between "slang" and
> "informal"/"colloquial" strikes me as a bit slippery if not ad hoc.

The Introduction to the first volume of HDAS spends some time discussing
the differences among "slang", "informal", and "colloquial".

It is relatively rare that we would allow the labelling in another
dictionary to influence our decision about the slang/colloquial
status of an item. If we were on the fence about something and
other dictionaries had it completely unlabelled, that might have
some influence, but on the whole, the HDAS regards many more words
to be "slang" than are thus labelled by most other dictionaries,
and also excludes as not-slang some words that are considered slang
by other dictionaries.

> Yes, it does.  That all sounds fine, Jesse, and of course I will be
> interested to see the early cites for the post-nominal 'facile' sense
> arising in 1989.  I also think some of the current uses cited in my
> earlier post, especially as proper noun modifiers (Reagan lite,
> Chomsky lite, Hitler lite), aren't so much 'over-simplified ' or
> 'facile' or even 'lacking in substance' but something more along the
> lines of a weakened, adulterated, softened or less extreme version of
> the modified name/noun.

I agree. The entry as it stands now was drafted at least three years
ago, and is still a draft; changes such as you mention, along with
earlier cites than what I quoted (esp. of product terms that can be
gotten from databases), will appear when it's time to look at the
entry again.

Jesse