Dictionary Confusion
Sometimes I looked up words in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) online. For fun (it's the UofC in me coming out), and for papers. Just now I looked up the word nuanced, because I just used it in my paper that I'm writing. Even though I hear this word all the time, I use it occasionally, and can grasp it's general meaning, I don't think I would be able to pin down a good definition to it if someone asked me. So I looked it up. and here's what I got:
nuanced, a.
Possessing or exhibiting delicate gradations in tone, expression, meaning, etc.
1920 Chambers's Jrnl. 15 May 374/1 His carefully nuanced Bostonian accent. 1965 Listener 21 Oct. 613/1 Marxists often distinguish between ‘Marxism’ and ‘vulgar Marxism’... The former is subtle, profound, nuanced,..and dialectical. 1972 Language 48 457 In a study devoted to discriminations among adverbs, one would expect a nuanced feeling for them, and to a large extent this is borne out. 1990 Science 11 May 672/3 The media and the public may not be so sophisticatedwith the result that carefully nuanced positions disappear.
Does this seem strange to you? That the OED would define a word using etc.? I mean, the reason people use a dictionary is to comprehend the exact meaning...because you don't know what a word means in the first place. It doesn't seem right that they give you half a definition and then make you infer the rest. Very strange. I wonder if a lot of other definitions are similarly defined. What I do find very interesting is how young this word is; I would have guess that it's much older. But then again, I've never been great at knowing etymologies.
In other similarly-related dictionary news, today my roommate Sylvie pulled out her good old American Heritage to look up "Type-A personality" for me. Surprising, it's in there. Also, we agreed today that a dictionary is a great housewarming gift (Sylvie got hers when her family moved into a new house), and Sylvie warned Karin and I that we s houldn't be alarmed when that's what we'll recieve from her in the future once the time comes. :o)
Sometimes I looked up words in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) online. For fun (it's the UofC in me coming out), and for papers. Just now I looked up the word nuanced, because I just used it in my paper that I'm writing. Even though I hear this word all the time, I use it occasionally, and can grasp it's general meaning, I don't think I would be able to pin down a good definition to it if someone asked me. So I looked it up. and here's what I got:
nuanced, a.
Possessing or exhibiting delicate gradations in tone, expression, meaning, etc.
1920 Chambers's Jrnl. 15 May 374/1 His carefully nuanced Bostonian accent. 1965 Listener 21 Oct. 613/1 Marxists often distinguish between ‘Marxism’ and ‘vulgar Marxism’... The former is subtle, profound, nuanced,..and dialectical. 1972 Language 48 457 In a study devoted to discriminations among adverbs, one would expect a nuanced feeling for them, and to a large extent this is borne out. 1990 Science 11 May 672/3 The media and the public may not be so sophisticatedwith the result that carefully nuanced positions disappear.
Does this seem strange to you? That the OED would define a word using etc.? I mean, the reason people use a dictionary is to comprehend the exact meaning...because you don't know what a word means in the first place. It doesn't seem right that they give you half a definition and then make you infer the rest. Very strange. I wonder if a lot of other definitions are similarly defined. What I do find very interesting is how young this word is; I would have guess that it's much older. But then again, I've never been great at knowing etymologies.
In other similarly-related dictionary news, today my roommate Sylvie pulled out her good old American Heritage to look up "Type-A personality" for me. Surprising, it's in there. Also, we agreed today that a dictionary is a great housewarming gift (Sylvie got hers when her family moved into a new house), and Sylvie warned Karin and I that we s houldn't be alarmed when that's what we'll recieve from her in the future once the time comes. :o)
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