atheist

[Laurence Horn]

At 9:40 AM -0500 12/20/09, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>Jesus Christ, are there no agnostics any more?
>
>JL

I don't know.

LH

>On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 8:08 AM, Jesse Sheidlower <jester at panix.com> wrote:
>
>>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>  -----------------------
>>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>  Poster:       Jesse Sheidlower <jester at PANIX.COM>
>>  Subject:      Re: atheist
>>
>>
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>  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
>>
>
>
>
>--
>"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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