Grice: "I don't give a hoot what the dictionary says"

--- by JLS
------ for the GC

--- Transcribed from a tape by Grice in "The Grice Collection", Bancroft -- cited by Chapman:

"And then I would say to Austin, with provocative intent that I didn't give a hoot what the dictionary said, getting his retort, "And that's where you make your big mistake"".

In "Life of Grice", Grice goes bowdlerised, "I don't care what the dictionary says".

--- One may share Grice's attitude or not when reading this colonial Burchfield who helped the edition of the OED. As Burchfield notes in "The Making of the OED" (Faber):

"Some words are admitted in the OED with labels like [below]."


1. are -0
2. are -1
3. and #

"Hapax legomena"

-- what Horn has as "nonce" --

"are freely admitted in the
OED. In this group, as in others, the pattern of admission is governed as
much by the choice made by the readers as by any abstract principles
adopted by the editor. If a reader MADE A SLIP for an item it was likely to
be included, with small regard for consistency in comparable words."

"Conversely, a word that was NOT COPIED by a READER had little chnace of
inclusion since the EDITORIAL STAFF would almost certainly be unaware of
its EXISTENCE."

! That's why "implicature" is yet to make its way!

"Some of the main classes of RARE words may be illustrated as follows."

I. rare -0
(i.e. a word known to exist which has not been traced in a non-dictionary
context).

Such as:

implank

imprevalence

impoverishly

"Such words were frequently recorded as occurring in more than one dictionary."

impotentness: Palsgrave, Bailey

impigrity: Cockeram, Blount, Phillips, Bailey.

IMPLUMOUS Johnson, Todd

==== cfr. Aristotle
Man is an implumous biped.

MARINORAMA: Webster 1847:
a panoramic representation of sea views.

II. rare -1

(used similarly when only ONE non-dictionary context was known to exist)

grimcunldeghc Ormin

kikelot, a tattling woman. Ancr R

marshly Chaucer

marrement Gower

seneke, an elder. Pistill of Susan

senatoire. Caxton

seneschaunce. Berners

martel Spenser.

===HEY this author also uses
"Speranza" as the name of one character
Unfortunately, the name is a woman!

http://www.uoregon.edu/~rbear/fqintro.html
(Book I, Canto 10, in stanzas 4, 14 and 22).

wealsman. Shakespare

inadulterate

impoignant

sendaline

sphairistic

manualism



III. RARE WORDS



masuel

senectute

manuable

inabrogable

seneschally

inaccentuated: accentuated, 1716.

manuscriptural




IV. "NONCE WORDS are frequently entered."

jail-deliver: to deliver from jail. 1631

laugh-at-able. s.v. laughable, 1844

manusculpt

an inscription carved or engraved by hand
De Quincey

nanucapt. to direct by a write of manucaption, 1898.


"In the OED, the first three labels were using sparingly."

Cfr.


imberb. rare

impotentising. rare -1

impressionise. rare

in-earnestness. SERIOUSNESS. rare-1 HOPKINS

((I WROTE AN ESSAY ON THIS, since it was a euphemism at a
time. cfr. THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST by
Speranza's son, Wilde)).

inoperance. rare-1 ELIOT.


The use of "#" (Actually the Section sign).

"In the OED the small paragraph
sign was used to indicate "catachrestic and ERRONEOUS USES"


And there are people in analytic (like me) who think the idea of an
erroneous use is wrong.


"... confusions and the like". This is by far the most importance
circumstance in which the OED is straightforwardly prescriptive. The sign
is used freely in all volumes with anabated sterness. Examples:


1. ERRONOUS and confused uses:


euphuim. # for euphemism.

prostitute. # for prostrate



!


2. LATINISMS, and other furrin lingos.


EVER. giving a distribute sense to numerals.
A mere germanism


proscribe.


why. Hebrew KY, "because"


WOAD-ASHES. from the German wedasche.


WOOD. from L. Furialis.


3. # used as a symbol introducing an OBITER DICTUM, i.e. NOT indicating an
erroneous or confused use.


GOOD. # good old.

LIKE # some phrasal uses of the adj. have a special idiomatic force


(THEY SHOULD LISTEN TO Britney Spears)


SHALL. # an ironical affirmative in exclamatory sentence,
equivalent to the interrogative. RARE. 1741.


The symbol "#" is now used as a convenient indicator of certain types of
EVITANDA that occur even in educated writings:


IGNORANT, # sometimes written IGGERANT in imitation of vulgar speech


!


Of course here I must add


FOREIGN. # furrin sometimes written "furrin" by L. Tapper.

STUDENT. # sometimes written "stoodent" by our resident native Speeker L. M.
Tapper.

ILIGANT. # used chiefly as an Irishism for ELEGANT.

IMPRIMATUR. used confusedly = imprint.
"the agent, not the candidate, is the one liable to fines...
if he ... issues one word of election literature without his
own and the printer's imprimatur on it"
(Daily Telegraph)

====

Etc.