Comment by wolverine876 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wolverine876 | Hacker News Reader

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> (Insert obligatory "wiki it's not always accurate etc etc"). Overall I'd take either one and personally don't care. Just trying to match what you're saying with what I'm reading and make sense of where the truth is.

Diving in (even if the parent doesn't care :) ):

The last sentence is the real challenge: Meanings depend 100% on writer and reader understandings. If two agree that 'homograph' means 'chicken poop', as long as they're the only ones communicating then 'chicken poop' it is; but if someone else reads it, our language subsystem fails.

Some dictionaries influence meaning by being prescriptive (e.g., American Heritage, IIRC); others report what has been understood by being descriptive (e.g., Oxford). The problem is, Wikipedia is neither: It represents the understandings of a few editors of unknown knowledge; it is neither descriptive nor prescriptive and we quickly get into chicken poop scenarios.

* Homograph, report Merriam-Webster and Oxford, means words with the same spelling but different meanings (or origin or pronunciation), e.g., the bow of a ship and a bow and arrow.

* Homoglyph doesn't appear in Oxford, Merriam-Webster, American Heritage, or any others (per Wordnik and OneLook), except Wiktionary. Wiktionary descriptively traces the word back to 1938 (though maybe with a different meaning in that case) and says it means a glyph with the same or similar appearance but different meaning. That still doesn't define a term for the entire string "ycornbinator.com", only the "rn", but close enough!

There is also 'homeograph' - "A word similar — but not identical — in spelling to another." That seems a better fit for your needs.

> Some dictionaries influence meaning by being prescriptive (e.g., American Heritage, IIRC); others report what has been understood by being descriptive (e.g., Oxford). The problem is, Wikipedia is neither: It represents the understandings of a few editors of unknown knowledge; it is neither descriptive nor prescriptive and we quickly get into chicken poop scenarios.

To be clear: reporting what has been understood still influences meaning. Choice of inclusion moderates spread; definitions are inherently lossy and cannot capture the whole range of nuance; the compiler's understanding can be inaccurate. Lexicography is not a neutral art, no matter your choice of biases. And OED no less "represents the understandings of a few editors of unknown knowledge" than Wikipedia does. With different goals, and to different standards, to be sure, but Gell-Mann amnesia goes hard until you get into the weeds.

> reporting what has been understood still influences meaning. Choice of inclusion moderates spread; definitions are inherently lossy and cannot capture the whole range of nuance; the compiler's understanding can be inaccurate.

I agree and actually had a sentence in the GP that said it, but removed it because it was getting too long. An important point. Also, the Oxford English Dictionary intends to be descriptive and says so, but many readers won't understand that and take it as prescriptive.

> OED no less "represents the understandings of a few editors of unknown knowledge" than Wikipedia does.

The knowledge of OED editors is not unknown but well known and exceptional - the world's leading lexicographers, with the best training and decades of experience. The resources are exceptional: top-notch professional lexicographers, domain experts, databases, teams of volunteers reading and contributing, etc. The definitions are not based on the contemporary understanding of a few people but on over a century of accumulated research, back to the beginning of English, and the understandings of those people, plus it depends on the input of domain experts, editors, etc.

I'm not knocking Wikipedia, which has its value, and the OED is, like every human institution, limited. But beyond that general statement, the quoted sentence doesn't describe the OED at all.

Awesome response. Thanks for taking the time to write it.

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