On Friday’s Red Eye I may have besmirched The American Heritage dictionary. In fact, I know I did. We were talking about a study that said that brainy girls have more difficulty in the bedroom than their dumber counterparts because they are always thinking. I said this was true, and that I was known to read a dictionary while with a suitor but that since switching from Merriam Webster to The American Heritage dictionary, which I said was the dumber dictionary, magic has happened.
Now see, I feel I unfairly maligned American Heritage. It’s the dictionary I grew up on and it’s the dictionary I actually own—though in this day and age it’s rare that I actually open a dictionary because all that stuff is online. Also, my dictionary is packed in a box somewhere along with my lady parts, incidentally, but I think I covered that sufficiently in another post. But Merriam Webster is the dictionary most magazines use as the authority, hence my thinking it’s probably got an edge. In fact, one of my first edit notes at TONY said “check Web10” and I tried to go to that website but there was nothing there. How foolish was I! Web10 was sitting on my desk. Webster’s 10th edition. Now they’re on Web11 I think. Anyway, fuck those dictionaries, both of which are child’s play compared to the OED, you know?