In the spirit of collective mourning, I just have to share this with you, my blog audience, since it seems that many of you are as nerdy (in the cultured, well-educated sense of the word) as I am and thus might actually care. The OED is a Bible of sorts for us English majors. One of those sources you feel the need to reference in every academic paper worth its blood, sweat, and tears. So to discover it contains an error is, well, earth-shattering.
[Insert collective sob here].
4 comments:
How funny! Indeed, I never expected the dictionary to go so far as to explain how things work. Although I AM left feeling confused. What IS a siphon, now, anyways?
All I know is that if you're siphoning gasoline, try not to keep sucking after the gas reaches the mouth end of the tube....
Is it nerdy of me to think it is sort of awesome that a mistake could last that long in the OED? I love it! Great story.
Oh no! I thought the OED was infallible! But I have to admit something: I really did think that a koala was a type of bear...
How odd it managed to last that long! But, most people in need of a siphon would be looking things up in science books, I suppose. I have not lost my faith in the OED.
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