Today the world has became a global village. Internet has reduced the distance between cultures. This leads to what theorists call “hybridity”
When cultures come in contact, there is an exchange of knowledge, language, and culture. This leads to siginificant shift in meaning of words. But sometimes meaning changes too fast. Everyday new word, phrases, acronyms, abbreviations are coined. Standard corpus is updated only less frequently. And sometime meanings are considered not up to the standard of language.
One might wonder where to look for meaning exchanged around the internet if it is not part of standard corpus.
That is where “Urban Dictionray” comes in handy. And most of the time you can find the meaning of words not present in standard corpus.
It is said that it is a dictionray created of by “Internet users”
So it contains mostly slangs and very less frequently standard terms. It is by no means a replacemnet for standard corpus.
It is advised to use it catiously. And only as last resort when you cannot find meaning used in informal context. For formal context, standard corpus (such as OALD, OED etc) will do just fine.
Now you guys and girls will be wondering why i brought this up.
My collection of dictionaries that was my very first contribution to the site contains this dictionary. Actually. Two or maybe three version. I don’t recall correctly as it was several years ago.
Now i see that it has been quite a while since this dictionary has been update. Atleast 4+ or may be less years. I intend to work on it once my M-W project is finished and published.
The importance of this dictionary. Last time i mention that to understand Shakespeare you need an unabridged dictionray such as Merriam-Websters. They claim at their site to understand Shakespeare you can rely on M-W Unabdriged. But i search one word which is previously discussed. To my surprise it was NOT there. Nothing. Then i look it up on “Urban Dictionray” and found the Shakespearian sense was listed there. That is why i am writing this article.
I am sharing the screenshots form Unabridged Dcitionray, OED by karx, and Urban Dictionary.
What i found that it was listed and documented in OED, Urban Dictionary, but not in Merriam-Websters’ Unabridged Dictionray.
Interstingly, Urban Dictionray listed with exact example from Shakespeare’s work.
OED also has this sense listed as shown in the screenshot.
As a linguist, who study in English as medium, i found this really interesting. So, i decided to share it with literature and liguistics enthusiasts and professional here.
Thanks for reading. Have a great day/night.
