A WORD, PLEASE:The enormity of dictionary confusion

Late: adj.: happening, coming, etc. after the usual, proper, or expected time; tardy unorganized: adj.: having no regular order, system, or organization; not behaving, thinking, etc. in an orderly way flake: n. [Slang] an eccentric, unbalanced, or irrational person.

On the heels of my recent column about National Punctuation Day, which ran two weeks after that holiday, today I bring you yet another example of stellar organizational and planning skills. Welcome to a column celebrating this year’s National Dictionary Day, which was on Oct. 16.

Apologize: vi.: to make an apology; acknowledge, and express regret for, a fault, wrong, etc.

National Dictionary Day may just be a way to sell books. Checking Vegas hotel websites, I don’t see a spike in room rates on Oct. 16, suggesting that maybe not everyone gets the day off work. Oh, and I learned about National Punctuation Day by reading a press release from the Houghton Mifflin company, publishers of the “American Heritage Dictionary.”

Nonetheless, it gives us an opportunity to focus on words and dictionaries.

Here’s a little-known fact about dictionaries: They’re extremely controversial.

“‘Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary,’ like other college dictionaries, actually promotes the misuse of the English Language,” writes Robert Hartwell Fiske in the introduction to his 2005 “Dictionary of Disagreeable English.”

He accuses the makers of this dictionary’s 11th edition of deliberately putting in trendy words to get attention — to distinguish itself from the pack. While I can find plenty wrong with Fiske’s book, too, it’s hard to disagree with his examples, which include “def,” “funplex,” “McJob” and “tho” as a variant spelling of “though.”

“It’s a marketing strategy,” Fiske writes. “It’s not lexicography.”

I can’t tell you which dictionary to trust.

But I do think it’s good to know that dictionaries aren’t the absolute authorities many of us believe.

Even when they are working in our best interest, the most diligent lexicographer has quite a tough job in deciding exactly when “alright” should be allowed as an alternative to “all right.”

I can tell you, however, that the Associated Press Stylebook, the official guide for most newspapers, tells reporters and editors to use “Webster’s New World College Dictionary” as a fall-back reference. And I can also share with you some useful tidbits I’ve found in dictionaries.

For example, you know how your mother would give you a hard time whenever you asked, “Can I be excused?” This question was likely to evoke, “You mean ‘may I be excused,’” from straightforward moms or “I don’t know. Can you?” from sassier ones.

Well, your mom might be interested to know that Webster’s New World College Dictionary offers, in its fifth entry, “can: v.aux: [Informal] am, are, or is permitted to.”

My apologies to you mom, especially for this next one.

You know how when asked, “How are you,” some people will sometimes answer, “I’m good”? And you know how sometimes mom types will correct them with, “You mean, ‘I’m well’”?

Well, yes, well is better. But lexicographers have decided that the tides have officially turned.

“Webster’s New World’s” fifth definition of “good”: “healthy; strong; vigorous [good eyesight].”

Moving on to a less controversial subject, here’s a commonly misunderstood word that has come to my attention recently.

“Enormity” is often used to talk about size, which is perhaps why “Webster’s” now has a definition permitting it. But the traditional definition tells us that “enormity” isn’t about big. It’s about bad. “1 great wickedness [the enormity of a crime]; 2 a monstrous or outrageous act; very wicked crime; 3 enormous size or extent; vastness: in modern use, considered a loose usage by some.”

So that’s my official column in celebration of National Dictionary Day. Be sure to catch my Thanksgiving column the second week of December.