Wednesday, February 21, 2007
"Disablement"
The Arms Control Wonk considers the strange word "disablement," its application in the Six Party Talks over North Korea's nuclear program, and whether or not it translates into Chinese. Interesting stuff. I note, however, that his snarky suggestion that "disablement" is not a "real" word in English is a cheap shot. "Disablement" is real enough to appear in several descriptive dictionaries -- which I agree is proof of nothing -- and the Fourth Edition of the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. For those of you without a librarian in the family, that is strong evidence that "disablement" is, in fact, a "real" word. The American Heritage Dictionary is prescriptive, meaning that it includes only words that have been vetted as "accepted" or "standard" by a panel of very snooty experts. Lacking an Acadamie Anglais, the American Heritage Dictionary is as close to a gold standard for determining whether a word is or is not "real" as we Americans have. So, whether or not "disablement" obfuscates more than it clarifies in a diplomatic statement that will be translated into five languages, it is certainly a "real" American English word and Condoleezza Rice need not apologize for having used it.
3 Comments:
By 
Assistant Village Idiot, at
Wed Feb 21, 06:32:00 PM:
I've got a librarian in the family: my wife. I am ambivalent about prescriptive dictionaries. On the one hand, slowing language change helps us to understand the writing and thoughts of previous generations. On the other hand, the reasons why we ended up with the words we did include a lot of randomness and chance.
"Disablement" is understandable by an educated native speaker of English on first hearing. It should therefore be considered acceptable.
By TigerHawk, at
Wed Feb 21, 06:50:00 PM:
AVI,
You share a household with a librarian? Library school and everything? Huge. No wonder you're so smart.
The TigerHawk father, may he RIP, was a librarian (finished up as History Bibliographer at Princeton, actually).
I used to be a big prescriptive dictionary snob, but I have become much more tolerant in my advancing years. They have their uses, however. One of them is winning arguments over the legitimacy of words.
By Assistant Village Idiot, at
Thu Feb 22, 06:27:00 PM:
Yes, MLS Simmons, (mumble) years ago. You can't play the dictionary came with her, because it takes too long to find words she doesn't know (Wasn't that some sort of medieval sea-vessel?")
