It seems to me that this bit of news was overlooked last weekend. In fact, it was slightly rewritten and re-released today. Regards, Randy
All-new lexicon by Microsoft offers English in global context
BOSTON (AP) - The first new English dictionary in 30 years is a tickety-boo venture.
Tickety-boo?
That's a British and Canadian word meaning ''perfectly fine'' and it is found in the Encarta World English Dictionary, which is based on a global perception of English.
Encarta is the first full dictionary of the computer age, said Anne Soukhanov, the U.S. general editor of the dictionary, who also is the ''Word Watch'' columnist for The Atlantic Monthly. It is being published in print and electronically on CD-ROM by Microsoft and Bloomsbury Publishing of London.
''It's a sea change in dictionary making. This couldn't have been done five years ago,'' Soukhanov said. The dictionary shares its name with Microsoft's Encarta encyclopedia on CD-ROM and DVD.
There are eight versions of the dictionary - Britain and Ireland; United States; Canada; Caribbean; Africa; South Asia; East Asia; and Australia and New Zealand - and each contains many local usages.
But the local words considered most likely to be encountered by a traveler or browser were included in all versions.
''I think the dictionaries of the future will have to include words from around the world, given the way things have changed,'' Soukhanov said, referring to Internet use and wider international travel and commerce.
Some of those expressions are the Canadian ''slob ice,'' the slush that forms as snow melts on roadways; the Australian ''tall poppy syndrome,'' relating to public figures who loom large and the tendency by the media to want to knock them down; ''bangbelly,'' a piece of fried dough in Canada; ''toenadering,'' a gathering of political parties in South Africa.
The stock market contributed the phrase ''dead cat bounce,'' meaning false signals of a stock recovery brought on by a group buying into the stock to attract attention.
Encarta is the first new English dictionary since 1969, when the American Heritage Dictionary was published as a response to what was viewed as the too-liberal treatment of language by the Merriam-Webster's Third New World Dictionary.
Entries for the dictionary, which runs 2,074 pages on paper, were compiled by 320 editors who used computers and communicated by e-mail as they combed usages in the 74 countries where English is spoken.
That's a big difference from only a few years ago, when such work was done by hand on 3x5 cards.
''I feel as though I have moved from the Kitty Hawk to the space shuttle Columbia,'' said Soukhanov.
Encarta is selling in the United States for $50 in the print version and will cost $34.95 on CD-ROM, which will be available Aug. 27.
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