Dictionaries

According to the august Oxford English Dictionary, going bananas was simply not done before 1968, nobody went bonkers before 1957 and no one went to the loo before 1940. But the publishers of the 600,000-word reference book, billed as "the definitive record of the English language," are willing to be proved wrong.

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. -- The year was 1989, and "snitty" started off strong. The word popped up in the Los Angeles Times in January, then appeared in the March and August editions of People magazine. It was one of hundreds of words being tracked by editors at Merriam-Webster, who are always searching for new terms to enter into the Collegiate Dictionary. But something went wrong.

The music called the blues can express emotions with unmistakable clarity, but some of the words, whether sung by 1930s Mississippi Delta sharecroppers or big-city electric-guitar heroes, can be pretty obscure. Hunting down the origins and meanings of those words was the mission of New Jersey rock musician and journalist Debra DeSalvo. The result, "The Language of the Blues," is a witty, bawdy and fascinating dictionary.

Google is officially a verb. Google Inc.'s eponymous search engine became a sanctioned part of the English language Thursday, when "google" -- with a small "g" -- earned an entry among the 165,000 or so terms in the 11th edition of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary. The definition: "to use the Google search engine to obtain information ... on the World Wide Web." As in, "Let me google that." Linguists said google entered the lexicon especially quickly.

The journey of the word "blog" into the mainstream is now complete. Late last month, Merriam-Webster announced that "blog," the crude but catchy name for an Internet journal, was the most searched-for word at its online dictionary, www.m-w.com, in 2004. Reuters said the word "came to symbolize the difference between old and new media during this year's presidential campaign."

Seeking more "street cred" (n. popularity with or acceptance by the common people), Webster's New World College Dictionary has added almost 80 new words and definitions, an update that reflects the nation's current obsessions, from Al Qaeda and WMD on one hand to Botox and LASIK on the other. The 1,700-page dictionary is updated every year as editors try to keep pace with a constantly evolving language and include what they deem the "breakout" (adj.

From the evocative Tom Cruise-inspired term "jump the couch," meaning to exhibit frenetic or bizarre behavior, to the less colorful but more complex "integrity," the words and expressions Americans favored in 2005 are jockeying for position on linguists' and dictionary editors' year-end lists. If you read this article online at work, that's "infosnacking," Webster's New World College Dictionary's choice for 2005 word of the year.

George Washington and Princess Diana are near the back, while such lesser-knowns as murdered Liverpool toddler Jamie Bulger and the "Busby Babes," a soccer team struck by tragedy, occupy the front. No, it's not another wax museum, but the latest edition of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, the printed pantheon of Britons great and small, and of those who influenced them. The work was published Thursday by the Oxford University Press.

VATICAN CITY -- The Vatican has issued a dictionary of definitions aimed at clearing up ambiguity about Roman Catholic thought on sexuality and bioethics. The Vatican Congregation for the Family began quietly distributing its 867-page, Italian-language "Lexicon" to bookshops this week. It did not follow the usual Vatican procedure of calling a news conference to introduce and explain the work. The book is expected eventually to be translated into English and other languages.

Imagine the lofty air of expectation for the next edition of the venerable Oxford English Dictionary -- an unprecedented revision is underway that, finally, authoritatively, is expected to nail down those vexing questions of lexicology. To wit: What is the etymology of "bling-bling"?