Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
But real-world usage is what is "proper". The role of most dictionaries is to document how language is used, not to act as an "arbitor" of how it "should" be used.
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That's actually a reference controversy that's been around for some time. There are different schools of thought as to whether or not a dictionary should be didactic. In Webster's own day, dictionaries were always didactic. They existed to tell you
how to use the language, not just what words meant. That's why Webster published his 1828 dictionary: both to formalize the American English language and to differentiate usage from British English. There would be little point in going through this exercise absent the desire to be instructive, rather than just to document common usage (which was a hopeless mixture at the time Webster compiled his dictionary).
Having said that, no dictionary is exhaustive. The fact that something is or isn't in the dictionary isn't what makes it a word (in English or any other language).