while trolling the OED...

[Jonathan Lighter]

To Fred's point:

Isn't the real issue not that it's "considered highly offensive" but
that it's (also) not in keeping with current scientific understandings
of character and psychology?

Would OED leave an old definition suggesting that the earth is flat
alone and suggest that it's "highly offensive"?

"Perversion" remains a useful word. In its invidious sexual
application it still means what it used to, even if now used only by
worried or invidious people.

JL

On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 8:58 AM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: while trolling the OED...
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 2/18/2012 10:05 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>>…I noticed this gloss for the 'non-gay' sense of
>>_straight_ (attested since 1941):
>>
>>6 d. slang (orig. U.S.). Conventional,
>>respectable, socially acceptable. Also
>>spec.  (a) heterosexual; not practising sexual perversions
>>
>>I know this probably just means the "S" entries
>>haven't been revised yet, but perhaps this one
>>should be giving special attestion, lest the
>>Santorums (Santora?) of the current political
>>scene leaf through their no doubt well-thumbed
>>copy of the OED to prove their point in this
>>regard, now that they can no longer support the
>>view that same-sex partners are incapable of
>>love (and that arranged marriages are abnormal)
>>by citing the late, unlamented sense 4a of
>>_love_, n., that was on the books until 2008:
>>'That feeling of attachment which is based upon
>>difference of sex; the affection which subsists
>>between lover and sweetheart and is the normal basis of marriage.'
>
> Since homophobes are too dumb (or bigoted) to
> understand that the semicolon means "or", I agree
> with Larry's implied argument that 6.d. "spec."
> should at least be separated into an (a) and a (b).
>
> Joel
>
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