British bias in the OED

[Amy West]

On 12/18/12 12:00 AM, Automatic digest processor wrote:
> 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.
I would resist that because it a) it's in that tricky "Proper Noun"
territory and b) should be self-explanatory given the context. And I say
this as a sports ignoramous. Even *I* can tell the difference . . .

Similarly, as for the original question re: the color sense, again, as a
reader/listener it may take me a little while to work out from the
context that the color is being used to identify the school/team, but I
should be able to. It's when it becomes much more opaque that there
would be need for an entry. But at that point are you going to list
every school that uses that color? I don't think so.

---Amy West

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