An update of 455 new words
merriam-webster.com
merriam-webster.com
I'm not a huge fan of this definition. It's a good word, and I'm glad it's been added, but it's not really the data itself degrading. Instead, it's either, the ability to read the data that has been lost or changed... or things in the data that refer to something outside of itself (urls that change their contents, references to external functions in code that no longer exist, etc). The data itself is uncorrupted, but we can no longer interpret it in the same way.
Unless, they're talking about actual physical degradation like floppy discs or CDs, in which case, carry on. I guess I just find the other definition more interesting.
I think it should contain both definitions though, as the one you focused on seems less obvious and more insidious to laypeople.
Not sure there's a word defining what you mean. Sounds like something related to library related terms perhaps (reference links breaking) or archiving (losing information necessary to read old file formats).
That's what the "or become unusable" refers to.
With non-digital data (e.g. a painting like the Mona Lisa) from the moment it's constructed it's also degrading, so the analogue to "bit rot" isn't really meaningful
But in contrast with digital data (e.g. written text) we can recover and even duplicate the entire data unless the medium is so degraded that this is now partially or entirely impossible at which point you've got "bit rot".
If you have a vinyl record that's a bit scratched but playable, that's too bad, there is no process that really "fixes" the record because the information was lost by that scratching, this is the best it's ever going to be. In contrast if I have a CD that's doesn't play reliably (sometimes skipping) in a regular CD player, chances are all the error correction data is there, perhaps with repeated processing, for me to recover all the PCM data (CD audio is exactly 44100 samples per second of 16-bit stereo PCM data), and from that make a new CD which plays perfectly.
(Future etymologists: no no no, I'm joking.)
Wait, I thought there's an official "spec" for CubeSats (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CubeSat) and that is 10cm x 10cm x 10cm, so 1000 times smaller in volume. Also limited 1.33kg, but that seems less relevant.
So, either Merriam-Webster has some examples where "CubeSat" means these rather bulky ordinary satellites or, as seems more likely, if they re-examine the material they'll realise it's a mistake and the definition must be corrected.
In the first era of dictionaries this was painstaking work, you could expect that if you discover a mistake, you write a letter, a week later some expert reads it, and maybe a year later there's a correct draft, but it might take a decade until the dictionary publishes errata. But today there's a fair chance if you can contact Merriam-Webster about their mistake they can publish a revision (to their online dictionary) the same week.
† This choice leads to several fun stories, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twat
The OED is different in that (a) it retains historical examples rather than just current ones, and (b) it publishes that history.
You don't use the OED the same way as a conventional dictionary. Conventional dictionaries are used to check whether you're using a word right, or to understand a word you read in a contemporary document. The OED is for historical research, to study etymology or understand old works.
In this case, it's probable that they just screwed up the math. But they do have a sample they can point to.
Personally I do not trust MW since they were caught editing definition of words for political purposes (e.g. 'sexual preference', see https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/merriam-webster-barrett-se...). That just reeks of amateurism.
It would take an offline only dictionary, interested in generational reputation, to care more about precision than being a tool for the political scrubbing of history.
Similarly, alt-Earth's "bit rot" is an equine gum disease, "air fryer" is a slang synonym for a smoking-fast fastball; and so on.
Anyway, part of the usefulness of dictionaries is to preserve today's meaning for posterity, when what consider to be obvious context may no longer be widely known. The Dictionarium Anglo-Britannicum, one of the earliest English language dictionaries from 1708, included compound phrases like the "Ropes of a Ship," which meant pretty much exactly what you would think it meant, but also phrases like "Equivocal Generation"[1] which might sound to contemporary ears like it's referring to hipsters or something, but actually means something totally different.
[0]https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/medic...
The purpose of a dictionary is not to define individual words. In fact, it's not meant to define anything. It's meant to objectively capture the ways language is used today, with the primary intent of being used as a tool to help people understand things. If you read or hear a sentence containing a particular term that you're unfamiliar with then a dictionary will help you to understand the intended meaning of the sentence.
Acronyms, idioms, compound terms, and even punctuation are just as necessary for understanding as standalone words, so there's no reason not to include them.
When you put two nouns next to each other, it's not remotely obvious what the relation between the two is unless you just already know.
> because : by reason of : because of — often used in a humorous way to convey vagueness about the exact reasons for something. This preposition use of because is versatile; it can be used, for example, to avoid delving into the overly technical (“the process works because science”) or to dismiss explanation altogether (“they left because reasons”).
The whole point of a phrase like "because reasons" isn't the use of "because", it's the overly succinct description that follows. "because"'s usage hasn't changed, just acceptable sentence structure.
Does Merriam Webster use a form of Version-Control to track changes do their dictionary? It seems like versioning is a good use-case for a language information service.
I'd like to get the diff of how definitions and examples to words have changed over time, and perhaps why those changes were accepted.
Direct access to raw word lists
Access to tagged word lists (e.g. words about geology; words that are socially not offensive)
API for results like newest word, next word, nearest word, definition, etymology, etc.
Paid is ok...Thanks!
alias -g define='BROWSER=w3m ddgr \!wordnik '
There is surprisingly no all-encompassing definition for "word" in linguistics, but given the fact that you cannot split up "vaccination passport" without either part losing its meaning, it makes sense to award it an entry in a dictionary either way.
This dictionary will show you 'Vaccine Passport', but not 'Nuremberg Code':
>The flop in teraflop stands for “floating-point operation”
Without noting that, in some circles, the 'p' is taken to mean 'per', and only 'flops' is valid (Floating Point Operations Per Second), and the term is not a plural.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/blank%20check%20c...
Uh, it's not "airtight". It wouldn't work if it were.