Discussion Forum (Archived)
Guest
So what's going on over at Oxford Dictionaries?
I had occasion to look up the word 'herewith', a couple of days ago. My main iPad dictionary app is the Oxford Shorter English Dictionary—you know, that one that used to come in two huge, weighty volumes and included a magnifying glass, on account of their use of 5 1/2 pt. type.
The Shorter Oxford advertizes that it includes a massive 600,000 words and phrases and, I quote, "all words in current use from 1700 to the present day, plus vocabulary from Shakespeare, the Bible and other major works before 1700."
Anyway, in this vast ocean, this veritable cosmos of English language words, there is no entry for the word 'herewith'. Not a single one. Nada. Diddley. Squat.
Guys. Guys! You guys over at Oxford: you've got a whole barnful of Phd's over there. You're busy adding a slew of new words each year (a notable 2014 entry: "g'day"—used as a familiar greeting; ‘hello’, ‘hi’. Freq. in g'day mate. ) So my plea: get back to your roots. Restore 'herewith' as a basic English word.
Meanwhile, that linguistic upstart, the Merriem-Webster Online, calmly and without fanfare offers up 'with this communication; enclosed in this' as its definition for'herewith'. Thanks Merriem-Webster.
John Davidson
Ottawa, Canada
When I got that set with the magnifying glass. put four pages per page and used paper thinner than a Kleenex. it was the full 13-colume Oxford English Dictionary that hadn't been changed since 1933.
The Oxford Shorter English Dictionary is an abridged dictionary, two volumes compared to the ten volumes of the current real OED. Oxford hasn't declared herewith a non-word. They include it in their British & World Dictionary and their US Dictionary, boith of which reside online.
If you were to upgrade from an iPad to a Kindle Fire, the dictionary in the Kindle application is the New Oxford American Dictionary. and there's a freestanding M-W dictionary, both free, both of which include herewith.
I don't know if you foolishly bought a dictionary not up to your needs, or if Apple defrauded you, but it would appear Oxford lexicographers are not guilty of killing off that word. Not, in my opinion, that herewith appears to do anything that here with doesn't do satisfactorily; it's a word that, to cop a Gilbert * Sullivan phrase, never would be missed.
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
1 Guest(s)