"Latin America" An Anomaly in OED

Shapiro, Fred fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU
Mon Aug 23 10:51:30 UTC 2010


I assume that the inclusion of citations for "Latin America" in the OED is an anomaly (because this is a proper noun).  I think the OED in its current revision is eliminating the few entries for geographical names, such as "England" or "America," or rather restricting such entries to allusive or collective or attributive senses.  Perhaps at some point in the future there might be a separate historical dictionary of geographical names.

Fred Shapiro

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