Comment on Two types
Acamon@lemmy.world 1 day agoYeah, but it isn’t impressive avoiding a letter if you can use any word you want, and it doesnt matter what it means. “Without employing the second most frequent letter of English.” would make sense or “the vowel which is commonly listed first” or some sort of thing. I suspect they just didn’t know what lexicon meant and thought it sounded smart.
bstix@feddit.dk 1 day ago
I think the description “first letter” is easily understood if you remember what a lexicon used to look like.
picture of lexicon books
Acamon@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Ahh, I didn’t know that Americans* called dictionaries ‘lexicons’. In most forms of English I’ve heard, and in the field of linguistics, ‘lexicon’ is the complete set of vocabulary in a language, or subject. A dictionary is an alphabetical list of a lexicon, often with definitions.
*I’m presuming it’s Americans because mirriam webster lists the dictionary definition first, while OED and Cambridge only list that as archaic usage.
bstix@feddit.dk 1 day ago
Well I’m neither English or American, but to me the word lexicon means encyclopedia. It’s still alphabetical.
DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 21 hours ago
It also means a person’s personal vocabulary… Aka a personal dictionary.
vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works 21 hours ago
Plenty of archaic uses are still common depending on dialect. One of the more annoying aspects of Cambridge and OED is the assignment of archaic to older or lesser used forms that may still be common in parlance bet fell out of favor in most other ways.
Also I refuse to listen to what the English have to say on the English because they keep intentionally fucking with their dialect.
Acamon@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
Quite right! Never trust the English! But what do you mean, they “keep intentionally fucking with their dialect”? All languages, dialects, sociolects, etc are constantly changing in different ways, do you feel like the dialects of England change more than other? Or that they do it more purposefully?