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It reminds me of a concept I've been hearing a lot recently: Dictionaries do not define words. They tell you what a word is being used for, but nothing about a dictionary gives any moral or philosophical credence to any particular definition.

In other words, the definition of a word depends on its real-world usage; dictionaries attempt to capture common usages, but no definition of a word can be considered the "true" definition more than any other used and understood application of the word.

So in this case, calling these definitions "imposters" or "not-abstractions" is absolutely wrong. That said, I like the attempt to introduce names for different flavours of abstraction to make discussion easier. That's definitely useful. Just wish it wasn't off the back of incorrectly telling people that their use of the language is incorrect.




There's actually two different schools of linguistics: prescriptive ("language is this") and descriptive ("language is used like this"). A dictionary can be written in one or the other, or some mixture of the two. To say that all dictionaries are purely descriptive is incorrect.


There are - and without going into too much detail about the art of lexicography (of which I'm not an expert) natural languages tend to be handled descriptively (e.g. Esperanto not being a natural language is exempt from this, French being one of a few natural languages that are notable exceptions, as they have an institute that does prescribe the language - I believe for France French it's the Institut français - in an attempt to fight the influences of English on the language. I believe that French-speaking Canada has a separate institute too)

[edit: this information might be out of date - looks like there isn't a central forum for this in French any more, however forums do spring up periodically]

But yes, English is - these days - predominantly handled within a descriptive framework, and dictionaries such as Miriam Webster [1] and Oxford English Dictionary [2] point out that they only exist to describe usage.

There may be an argument to be made about definitions within scientific fields; but without the dictates of a cohesive authority, it's very hard to claim this as truly prescriptive. It is up to groups of expert practitioners to come to consensus on the definitions. And you can argue whether that is the very definition of prescriptive (because they prescribe the word's usage on the rest of the world) or descriptive (because they as the predominant users of those words are describing the academic usage of the words)

But I have yet to see an English dictionary that claims to be fully prescriptive. If it did, it would have dubious authority to do so. Similarly, I feel like we're so many miles away from a consensus on the Computer Science definition of "an Abstration" that my original point stands.

[1]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/descriptive-vs...

[2]: https://public.oed.com/blog/quiz-myth-busting-the-oed/


Even descriptive dictionaries imply a certain amount of prescription, as: "prefer using words as they are herein defined, if you care about others being able to understand you".


I would tend to agree. I've heard the "dictionaries only record usage" argument before, and I've always found it unconvincing. The same people who argue for purely descriptive linguistics when you challenge a word usage of theirs for being ambiguous will turn around and correct you when you misspeak.


Fully agreed! And this:

> That said, I like the attempt to introduce names for different flavours of abstraction to make discussion easier. That's definitely useful.

Is the real value of this article.




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