Everyone makes mistakes, and lexicographers are no exception. Even now, when most dictionaries are produced by large teams, errors ranging from typos to incorrect definitions can make their way in - after all, dictionaries are big books that take a lot of work to write. Samuel Johnson famously defined ‘pastern’ as the ‘knee’ of a horse (it is in fact a part of the horse’s foot), and when asked why, is said to have replied ‘ignorance, Madam, pure ignorance’.
More recently, a famous mistake appeared in the 1934 Webster’s New International Dictionary, Second Edition, which included the word ‘dord’, defined as a term in physics and chemistry meaning ‘density’. What had happened was that an editor had written on a definition slip, ‘D or d, Physics & Chem., density,’ meaning that either ‘D’ (the uppercase letter) or ‘d’ (the lowercase letter) could be used as an abbreviation for the word ‘density’. In the seven years it took to find and correct this mistake, it was copied into several other dictionaries.
Mistakes can also arise from omission—the editors of the First Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary decided to omit ‘appendicitis’, and ‘radium’ because they seemed likely to be short-lived terms!
Not so long ago an Australian physicist spotted a 99-year-old mistake in the Oxford English Dictionary.
Dr. Stephen Hughes, from the University of Technology in Brisbane, was conducting research for an article for science teachers when he noticed an error in the dictionary for the word 'siphon'.
The dictionary definition of the word stated that atmospheric pressure makes siphons work, when in fact it is the force of gravity.
He said: "We would all have an issue if the dictionary defined a koala as a species of bear, or a rose as a tulip."
A spokesman for the dictionary said the definition was written by "editors who were not scientists" and that Dr. Hughes's notes would be taken into account when the entry was rewritten.
The final Curious © phrase:
“I am very sorry, but I cannot learn languages. I have tried hard, only to find that men of ordinary capacity can learn Sanskrit in less time that it takes me to buy a German Dictionary”
( George Bernard Shaw )
