Christopher and E -- IMO, you are both right, and you are both wrong.
Christopher has a point, I think, when he observes that the "truly learned" may accept a usage that the "mostly learned" will reject. Just remember those sneers: "Ain't ain't in the dictionary." Well, it is now. Just be careful how and when you use it!
But Christopher, you are in danger of turning the OED into a fetish. (In fact, somebody may get mad enough at you to sneak into your study at night, gather all 30 volumes up, carry them to the roof, and then drop them right on your head when you walk out of the front door in the morning! <g> )
And by the way, the OED folks themselves warn you that the OED is NOT, as you put it, "the most widely accepted authority on the proper and improper use of words":
The Oxford English Dictionary is not an arbiter of proper usage,
despite its widespread reputation to the contrary. The
Dictionary is intended to be descriptive, not prescriptive. In
other words, its content should be viewed as an objective
reflection of English language usage, not a subjective collection
of usage "do's" and "don'ts".
oed.com
Furthermore, according to this Guide to the OED:
The usage of each word, meaning, or idiom in the Dictionary is
documented through comprehensive examples drawn from
quotations taken from printed texts of the present and the past.
These quotation paragraphs begin with the earliest recorded
occurrence of a term, and follow its development up to the
modern period, unless the documentary evidence shows that the
term has fallen out of use along the way.
Now, I don't know how long a term has to be "out of use" before the editors put a little dagger before it (which means it is considered obsolete). Two centuries? Three? Four?
In any event, the last use of "dialogue" as a verb recorded by the OED was 100 or more years ago. Therefore, I personally would avoid it. Even if it is not officially "obsolete," it is still "quaint" enough to raise eyebrows. Just because a word is "in the dictionary," is no reason to use it, as the editors themselves take pains to point out.
Joan
P.S. And if you should think I am just being "sour grapes," since I don't have an OED myself, well, I was "sour grapes" -- until I decided to buy the new CD-Rom version, coming out this year. (I don't have any more shelf space!)
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