British bias in the OED :-) > Blues

[Geoffrey Steven Nathan]

On the other hand, having moved to Michigan ten years ago, I've had to learn that 'The Blues' (which is used frequently here) refers to Blue Cross/Blue Shield, which has special 'protected' status in Michigan, and their health and status is constantly being discussed on the front pages of Detroit newspapers.

Geoffrey S. Nathan
Faculty Liaison, C&IT
and Professor, Linguistics Program
http://blogs.wayne.edu/proftech/
+1 (313) 577-1259 (C&IT)

----- Original Message -----

> From: "Jesse Sheidlower" <jester at PANIX.COM>
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Sent: Monday, December 17, 2012 1:47:44 PM
> Subject: Re: British bias in the OED :-)

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Jesse Sheidlower <jester at PANIX.COM>
> Subject: Re: British bias in the OED :-)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

> On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 11:23:16AM -0500, George Thompson wrote:
> > On Sun, Dec 16, 2012 at 2:20 PM, Jonathan Lighter
> > <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:
> >
> > > In that case, the school colors of all universities should be in
> > > the OED.
> > > And the mascots and symbols of all big-league sports teams.
> > >
> >
> > To the extent that readers may encounter sentences like "He is [a
> > color]",
> > meaning "he is a graduate of [a school]".
> >
> > I don't know how common this would be, in the U. S. I attended
> > Boston U.,
> > but do not expect to be referred to as a Red (except in the
> > political
> > sense). I do see the sports teams from Syracuse &c. referred to as
> > The
> > Orangemen, &c; and the teams of other schools referred to as "The
> > Badgers",
> > &c. The overall context of whatever writing contains such
> > designations
> > will probably make clear what they signify, but the sentence out of
> > context
> > will puzzle.

> My sense is that these are not generally very common in the US.

> The entries in the _blue_ range are currently being revised, and I
> regret to inform our relevant Ivy friends here that we will not be
> including references to their schools therein. I think that outside
> of a
> gathering of alumni, no one (even graduates of these schools) would
> likely think of "blue" as referring to their school, unless the
> context
> was incredibly specific. The use in the UK is very different.

> The question of whether to include team names in general in
> dictionaries
> is different. This extends beyond college teams: Ron Butters has
> presented various papers arguing that entries like _Giant_ 'a member
> of
> the New York Giants football team' should be entered into general
> dictionaries. But few dictionaries do.

> Jesse Sheidlower
> OED

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