Re: paleonet Welcome to The Palaeo-oological Discussion Group

["Xavier Panades I Blas" <cogombra@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Thank you very much Gary



Respectfully,

Xavier Panades I Blas
55, Marksbury Road
Bedminster
Bristol BS3 5JY
England (EC)

http://www.acs.bolton.ac.uk/~xp1pls/
















From: "Gary Rosenberg" <rosenberg@acnatsci.org>
Reply-To: paleonet@nhm.ac.uk
To: <paleonet@nhm.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: paleonet Welcome to The Palaeo-oological Discussion Group
Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2006 13:14:58 -0400

Xavier received a reply from Jeremy Marshall, an editor at the OED (my 
contact there is Alan Hughes), and forwarded it to me for comment back to 
the group. I'll let Xavier explain the editor's comments on spelling and 
meaning of palaeo- compounds if he is so inclined. Regarding admission of 
words to the dictionary, Mr. Marshall says

"As with any new formation, we would not add the word to the Oxford English 
Dictionary until we had accumulated clear evidence that it had become firmly 
established in the language, outside the jargon of an immediate circle of 
specialists."

In reply to my previous post, Xavier noted that the Palaeo-oological 
Discussion Group was "founded in Oct 21, 2005, and the word 
"Palaeooological" has been used constantly in there!" The OED would regard 
these instances as specialist jargon. If the word starts being used more 
broadly, then it will eventually make it into the dictionary. Usage in a 
variety of scientific journals (as opposed to only a couple) would probably 
count. Better would be to get the word used in newspaper articles about 
paleoological discoveries, such as fossil dinosaur or bird embryos, or 
dating of archaeological sites from ostrich egg shells. Most helpful would 
be antedatings of 2004, which would establish that the word was in use well 
before the start of a campaign to get it into the dictionary.

The advent of the Internet has swamped the editors at the OED with new words 
to consider, so their criteria might become stricter. It's easy to find 
words that are not in the dictionary; for example "orangest" (superlative of 
orange). Show me a dictionary that lists it. Then try googling it.

Gary