[Foundation-l] Appropriate surprise (Commons stuff)

[William Pietri]

On 05/13/2010 09:36 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
>   During the
> Golden Age of Islam it was much more eclectic and
> permissively pluralistic than the Christian or Jewish
> cultures of the time [...]


Which reminds me of another interesting historical tidbit.

I was rummaging for story about Samuel Johnson and people hunting for 
naughty words in his dictionary, when I came across a Google Books 
reproduction of an 1896 periodical titled "The Homiletic Review", edited 
by I.K. Funk, of Funk and Wagnalls. It appears that a competitor to 
their dictionary culled the naughtiest bits from the Funk & Wagnalls 
Standard Dictionary, used those to claim they were filth-mongers, and 
set out to create a giant hullabaloo.

What I quote below is a spirited defense of recording all the words as 
they are used. In the original, it's followed by a page of quotes from 
"scholars, teachers, and editors" applauding a neutral, uncensored 
reference work.

It's funny to see how little has changed.


    A VILE ATTACK ON THE STANDARD DICTIONARY.

    A grave wrong is being perpetrated by a reprinter of one of the
    English competitors of the Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary,
    assisted by some unscrupulous agents of other dictionaries—a wrong
    that cannot be excused by the exigencies of commercial rivalry. As
    is well known, in all unabridged dictionaries it is necessary to
    give the definitions of certain indelicate words. Eighteen of these
    words (selected out of a vocabulary of over 300,000 terms in the
    Standard) have been collected and printed with their definitions by
    the reprinter of this English dictionary, and circulars containing
    them are being distributed among teachers, school trustees, and
    parents all through this country, stirring up a filthy agitation
    that will end, unless frowned down by the public press and other
    leaders of public opinion, in setting people of prurient minds and
    children everywhere to searching dictionaries for this class of
    words. One of these publications contains such outrageously unjust
    comments as the following:

        "About two years ago the publishing house of Funk & Wagnalls
        brought into the world a monstrosity entitled the Standard
        Dictionary of the English Language."

        "So far as relates to its collection of obscene, filthy,
        blasphemous, slang, and profane words. It has no counterpart in
        dictionaries of the English Language."


    It is but fair to the press and scholars of England to say that the
    English critics have in no way seconded this unfair assault, but are
    unanimous in the most unqualified endorsement of the American work,
    the standard Dictionary, expressing in many ways the same opinion as
    that of the St. James's Budget [weekly edition of the St. James's
    Gazette] London, which said:

        " To say that it is perfect in form and scope is not
        extravagance of praise, and to say that it is the most valuable
        Dictionary of the English language is but to Repeat the obvious.
        The Standard Dictionary should be the pride of literary America
        as it Is the admiration of literary England."


    The insincerity of this attack on the Standard is seen in the fact
    that nearly every one of these 18 words is in the English work
    published by this reprinter, and it contains other words so grossly
    indelicate and withal so rarely used as to have been excluded from
    the Standard and from nearly all the other dictionaries. Fifteen out
    of the eighteen words (and others of the came class) are, and
    properly so, in the Century Dictionary, and they are to be found,
    with scarcely an exception, in every other reputable unabridged
    dictionary, and this class of words is invariably recorded in the
    leading dictionaries of all languages.

    Since this attack was made, we have submitted to Charles A. Dana and
    to a number of well-known educators the question whether we
    committed an error in admitting into the Standard, as have other
    dictionaries, this class of words. The answer has been without an
    exception, "You did not."

    The fact is, extraordinary care was used by the editors of the
    Standard "to protect the language."

    Of the more than 500,000 words collected by the hundreds of readers
    employed to search all books of merit from Chaucer's time to the
    present, over /300,000 were excluded wholly from the vocabulary/;
    hence there was no need to pad the vocabulary. The rules of
    exclusion and inclusion were most carefully made and rigidly
    enforced. A most perplexing problem from beginning to end was how to
    reduce the vocabulary, not how to enlarge it. Compression was
    carried by many devices to the extremest degree. The editors who
    passed upon the admission of words numbered over one hundred of the
    best known writers and scholars In America and England. To accuse
    such men of "filthiness" is to do a wrong of the gravest degree. It
    is the business of a dictionary to record words, not to create, nor
    to destroy them; to answer inquirers concerning the spelling,
    pronunciation, and meaning of all words that are used to any
    considerable extent, not to omit those it does not fancy. Whether a
    word has a right to exist or not, the final arbiter is the people,
    not the dictionary. The dictionary, as says Trench, should be the
    inventory of the language, and, as says the Encyclopedia Britannica
    under the term DICTIONARY, it "should include all of the words of
    the language. ... A complete and Standard Dictionary should make no
    choice. Words obsolete and newly coined, barbarous, vulgar, and
    affected, temporary, provincial, and local, belonging to peculiar
    classes, professions, pursuits, and trades, should all find their
    place,—the only question being as to the evidence of their
    existence,—not indeed, all received with equal honor and regard, but
    with their characteristics and defects duly noted and pointed out."

    Improper or indelicate words, when it was necessary to admit them
    into the Standard, were blacklisted as /low, vulgar, slang/, and
    printed in small type. It did not seem to the editors that an
    unabridged dictionary could go further without justly incurring blame.

    To collect from such a work words of the class referred to and
    publish them is as great an outrage as to collect from the Bible the
    many indelicate words and passages to be found there, or those from
    Shakespeare (some of these 18 words arc found both in the Bible and
    Shakespeare), and then to print and scatter abroad the collection,
    saying: " See what a foul book is the Bible; see what an obscene and
    blasphemous work is Shakespeare." The publication and distribution
    of these circulars is a gross assault on public decency. An agent
    who attempts to exhibit such a printed circular should not be
    listened to; he Is a public enemy, and should be turned from every
    decent door.

    The old story will be remembered of a woman accosting Samuel
    Johnson, shortly after his dictionary had been published, with,
    "Doctor Johnson, I am so sorry that you put in your dictionary the
    naughty words." " Madam," retorted the doctor, " I am sorry that you
    have been looking for them."


from http://books.google.com/books?id=ebYnAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA2-PA49

William