Staff Blog
Your dictionary is teaching you fake words
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| waterstones.com |
On Sunday, the AP reported that Collins English Dictionary will add 'meh' to the 30th anniversary edition out next year. Meh is an expression of apathy, with one of its first references in 2001 episode of The Simpsons. Since, it's use has been proliferated on blogs, e-mail and other Internetian aspects.
That's bullshit.
I understand why dictionaries include slang in their newest editions. It's, say, good publicity for the Oxford English Dictionary to add words like 'bootylicious' (although let's be honest, that's kind of like adding 'Hammertime') because it reminds people that dictionaries come in big books and define words. But here's the deal: Meh isn't a word. It's a sound effect. There are other onomatopoetic words in the dictionary like bam, pop or bang but those have more real world applications then the expression of fuck-if-I-care used when commenting on the Internet.
Collins English Dictionary, thanks for ruining the English language for the sake of an AP article.
Assholes.
meh
James Beale wrote: meh
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
[...] twinsies!thinkgeek.comEarlier this week, I wrote a blog post about the Collins English Dictionary’s inclusion of the word ‘meh’ into their 2009 edition. Here’s my general thesis:Meh isn’t a word. It’s a sound effect. There are other onomatopoetic [...]
[...] this announcement has caused a certain amount of support and disapproval from the blogosphere, centered around whether onomatopoeias and interjections are worthy of [...]