| The venerable 20-volume
Oxford English Dictionary contains about 700,000 words, but the editors
recently realized they were missing one: Doh!
The cartoon character Homer Simpson's forehead-smacking lament
is one of some 250 entries being added today to the dictionary,
which is widely considered the leading authority on the English
language.
"Doh" is now defined as "Expressing frustration
at the realization that things have turned out badly or not as planned,
or that one has just said or done something foolish," according
to the new entry in the dictionary.
The Simpsons only popularized the term; it was actually used extensively
in the 1950s, the OED found. Although it is often spelled "D'oh,"
the dictionary chose to omit the apostrophe.
Other newcomers to the dictionary include cheesy, which means second-rate
or inferior; six-pack, meaning rippling abdominal muscles, and Bollywood,
which refers to the Hindi film industry based in Bombay, India.
"We'll have terms from immuno-biology to gangster rap,"
says Jesse Sheidlower, who is head of the project for North America.
The OED's staff of 50 editors is wading through popular culture
looking for new words and usages that merit an entry, as part of
its 8-year-old million updating project. It is the first complete
revision of the dictionary since it was completed in 1928.
"The principle way we [get new entries] is to have readers
look around the world for things that seem new or significant,"
says John Simpson, chief editor of the OED. Contributors have included
a Nobel laureate and an inmate at an insane asylum, among thousands
of others.
"We have about 200,000 example sentences coming into the department
each year."
Simpson (John, not Homer) and his colleagues whittle that list
down to the few that seem to have gotten a solid foothold in popular
usage. He says his job also gives him an excuse to watch a lot of
action films, soap operas and quiz shows, to look for more new terms.
"Many terms are much older than you think they are,"
says Sheidlower.
"Phat," for example, makes its debut in the OED today
as a slang term meaning cool.
But it has been African-American slang since at least the 1960s,
OED researchers found. The word even appeared with its present meaning
in Time magazine in 1963.
The dictionary contains some surprises for people who think they
are using the latest, cutting-edge jargon.
(Agencies)
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古老莊嚴的《牛津英文詞典》（20卷）收錄了約700，000單詞。不過最近詞典的編撰者發現漏掉了一個單詞：Doh!
這個單詞本是卡通人物荷馬-辛普森拍腦門表達悔恨之情的口頭禪，如今已經成為詞典最新補充收錄的250個新單詞之一。要知道《牛津英文詞典》可是英語世界最具權威的詞典。
詞典對 "Doh"所做的解釋是："表達當發現事情朝壞的、不隨人意的方向發展或某人說了傻話、做了蠢事時的情緒"（
"Expressing frustration at the realization that things have
turned out badly or not as planned, or that one has just said or
done something foolish"）。
其實這個單詞早在20世紀50年代就已經形成并被使用，直到辛普森把它當成口頭禪， 才使"Doh"變得家喻戶曉。
這次被收錄的新詞還包括 "cheesy" 二流的、低級的； "six-pack"，意思是腹部打褶的肌肉；
"Bollywood", 指位于印度孟買的印度電影業中心。
新詞收錄項目北美區負責人杰西-謝德羅爾說："我們要收錄的新詞從免疫生物學到匪徒臟話無所不包。"
《牛津英文詞典》的50名編輯正在試圖從流行文化中搜尋有收編價值的詞匯和用法。這項工程是為期8年、耗資5,500萬美元的詞匯更新項目的一部分,也是該詞典于1928年編纂完畢后的第一次完整的修訂。
《牛津英文詞典》總編約翰-辛普森說："我們收集新詞的原則是讓我們的讀者關注世界上任何新的、有意義的事物。"
成千上萬名投稿人中包括一名諾貝爾獎得主和一名瘋人院里的病人。
辛普森先生說："我們每年收到約200，000個例句。"
約翰-辛普森和他的同事們把眾多的例句中篩選出在現實生活中最禁得住推敲的句子。據稱他為推敲這些新詞觀看了大量的動作片、肥皂劇和智力測驗節目，真是工作娛樂兩不誤。
謝德羅爾說："一些詞匯的歷史比人們想象的要長得多。"
以"Phat"為例，"Phat"直到今天才被《牛津英文詞典》作為一個俚語收錄進來，意思是"很酷"。而詞典的研究人員發現，至少在20世紀60年代，這個詞就在非洲裔美國人當中作為俚語使用。當它在1963年出現在《時代》雜志上的時候，它的意思就和現在一樣。
因此，《牛津英文詞典》使那些自認為一直在使用最新、最時髦的詞匯得人們著實吃了一驚。
(中國日報網站譯)
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Updated: 2001-06-23 01:00