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To: YHAOS
I’ve produced results. You’ve rejected them. Only an outcome selected to your specs will satisfy. Should more of your demands be met, you would simply change the boundaries again.

I am asking for the same thing I asked you for back in February, the same thing I was asking for the first time I used the word "cite" or "citation" here, the same thing I've asked the two posters who supported you for. From February:

Can you find a popular use of the term to mean, say, someone who believes God created a universe 13 billion years ago that through the inexorable operation of physical laws led to the evolution of human beings?
From my first mention of it in this thread:
a citation of a recent use of the word "creationist" in the generic "believe that God created the universe" sense.
From another post:
He's provided no citation for anyone using the word in normal speech--i.e., not a discussion of what the word means, but just as an undefined term
I would have thought phrases like "popular use" and "normal speech" would make it clear that I didn't mean dictionaries. But since you didn't seem to get that, I explained:
By "cite" I mean the kind of thing a dictionary uses to support its definition: an example of the word being used in the sense described, with source.
I don't say this to further the argument, but just to establish that I haven't ever changed the boundaries of the game.

Since you reject dictionaries as repositories of the meaning of words (their primary function),

Uh, no. I've agreed several times that dictionaries record all the meanings of a word. What they're not as useful for is indicating which meaning is the most commonly understood one.

I’ve asked if you, then, denounce dictionaries as perverse tools of the rabid and wicked Christian Right, and if you would even have one in the house

Sorry, I thought that must have only been asked for rhetorical effect. I love dictionaries. The only one I have in the house is my beloved, old American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. (I selected it precisely because of its Usage Panel, an acknowledgment that bare definitions can't tell the whole story of how a word is used.) These days, though, I mostly rely on dictionary.com, which presents results from multiple sources.

269 posted on 06/14/2009 2:49:56 PM PDT by Ha Ha Thats Very Logical
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To: Ha Ha Thats Very Logical
I cannot imagine why you would set any store in the value of dictionaries when you allege their ineffectiveness in providing us with the knowledge of what words mean. However you parse your words, you speak from both sides of your mouth. For example, the Compact Oxford English Dictionary of Current English states in its preface that its fully revised, updated, and redesigned edition “is directly informed by the evidence of how the language is actually used today.” Yet you allege that dictionaries don’t really tell us how words are commonly used, in direct contradiction to the volume. Can’t trust the dictionary, huh? It’ll lie to you every time. Oh, but it’s a wonderful book, just the same.

Why?

If dictionaries do not provide us with definitions that inform us how the language is used today, why would we bother to consult them, and why would you, as you claim, set any stock in their value?

In truth, in the instance of this particular word, there doesn’t seem to be a great deal of separation of meaning in most of the modern definitions I provided, and popular use doesn’t seem to have changed very much during the course of my entire lifetime, as witnessed by Webster’s Universal Dictionary of the English Language, unabridged, 1937, which I threw in with the later definitions Which, incidentally, also explains why as a kid my understanding of the term was no different than it is today.

I would have thought phrases like "popular use" and "normal speech" would make it clear that I didn't mean dictionaries.

I don’t know why, since popular use and normal speech seems to be what most dictionaries deal in. But, I understand why the political exigencies of the moment compel you to malign the usefulness of the dictionary even as you profess your profound admiration for its manifold virtues. You have to create a wall of separation between dictionaries and language, or your whole thesis falls apart. Such is the wonderful blessing of politics in our lives.

271 posted on 06/14/2009 8:14:29 PM PDT by YHAOS
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To: Ha Ha Thats Very Logical
Can you find a popular use of the term to mean, say, someone who believes God created a universe 13 billion years ago that through the inexorable operation of physical laws led to the evolution of human beings?

I haven't the foggiest idea what you're asking for.

But I DO know allmendream comes the closest to fitting your description. If I'm reading it correctly, not that he'd admit it in a million years. :)

But it reminds me of something...I see bumper stickers of people with pro-life on one end and Obama '08 on the other. There should be a term for someone that puts more faith in one thing than another opposing or at least competing belief; while simultaneously claiming firm belief in both.

Besides a hypocrite, because some people are unknowingly miseducated about one, or the other, or even both.

273 posted on 06/14/2009 9:11:57 PM PDT by tpanther (The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for g!ood men to do nothing---Edmund Burke)
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