{"id":2874,"date":"2012-07-19T08:40:35","date_gmt":"2012-07-19T13:40:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/library.waubonsee.edu\/wordpress\/?p=2874"},"modified":"2021-11-27T22:10:50","modified_gmt":"2021-11-28T03:10:50","slug":"prescriptivists-vs-descriptivists-the-fifth-edition-of-the-american-heritage-dictionary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/library.waubonsee.edu\/wordpress\/2012\/07\/19\/prescriptivists-vs-descriptivists-the-fifth-edition-of-the-american-heritage-dictionary\/","title":{"rendered":"Prescriptivists vs. Descriptivists: The Fifth Edition of The American Heritage Dictionary"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.themillions.com\/2012\/07\/flawed-beauty-the-fifth-edition-of-the-american-heritage-dictionary.html\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/library.waubonsee.edu\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/0547041012.01.MZZZZZZZ.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>For all its many virtues, the fifth edition is not perfect. Its one glaring flaw is an introductory essay written by the chairman of the Usage Panel, <strong>Steven Pinker<\/strong>, a Harvard University linguist and cognitive scientist who is also an avowed descriptivist.\u00c2\u00a0In \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Usage in <em>The American Heritage Dictionary<\/em>,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Pinker writes, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153(W)hen many speakers misuse a word on many occasions in the same way \u00e2\u20ac\u201d like <em>credible<\/em> for <em>credulous<\/em>, <em>enervate<\/em> for <em>excite<\/em>, or <em>protagonist<\/em> for <em>proponent<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0\u00e2\u20ac\u201c who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s to say they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re wrong? When enough people misuse a word, it becomes perverse to insist that they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re misusing it at all.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.themillions.com\/2012\/07\/flawed-beauty-the-fifth-edition-of-the-american-heritage-dictionary.html\">The Millions : Prescriptivists vs. Descriptivists: The Fifth Edition of The American Heritage Dictionary<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Agree or disagree: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153(W)hen many speakers misuse a word on many occasions in the same way \u00e2\u20ac\u201d like credible for credulous, enervate for excite, or protagonist for proponent \u00e2\u20ac\u201c who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s to say they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re wrong? When enough people misuse a word, it becomes perverse to insist that they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re misusing it at all.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (Stephen Pinker, in the intro)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[662,659,661,663,664,660,665],"class_list":["post-2874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-did-you-know","tag-5th","tag-americanheritagedictionary","tag-descriptivists","tag-edition","tag-fifth","tag-prescriptivists","tag-usage-panel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.waubonsee.edu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.waubonsee.edu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.waubonsee.edu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.waubonsee.edu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.waubonsee.edu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2874"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/library.waubonsee.edu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2874\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10028,"href":"https:\/\/library.waubonsee.edu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2874\/revisions\/10028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.waubonsee.edu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.waubonsee.edu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.waubonsee.edu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}