atheist

Jesse Sheidlower jester at PANIX.COM
Sun Dec 20 13:08:40 UTC 2009


On Sat, Dec 19, 2009 at 09:08:32PM -0500, Herb Stahlke wrote:

[...]

> Has the entry for "atheist" been revised to note such a more
> specialized usage?  I've gone through the revisions I could find on
> the OED Online site and could find no reference to "atheist."

The OED entry has not been revised yet. It is a difficult
concept, of course, and probably not one that can be settled
by recourse to a dictionary definition--there have been enough
interpretations of the term over the years that one can't just
say that one of them is the "right" one.

Jesse Sheidlower
OED

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



More information about the Ads-l mailing list