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[edit: this information might be out of date - looks like there isn't a central forum for this in French any more, however forums do spring up periodically]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[edit: this information might be out of date - looks like there isn't a central forum for this in French any more, however forums do spring up periodically]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