www.alphadictionary.com

A must-read, if I may be so totalitarian, from today's NYT. And don't forget to scroll down to the comments, which are as good or better than the article. All of the commenters should immediately join the Agora! And there I go, dictatorial again.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/20 ... ictionary/

Thomas Hardy used the word "small" as a verb and was challenged by a friend. Hardy showed his friend the entry for "small" in his newest dictionary. The definition was:
small, verb intransitive, to appear smaller as an object does when it moves away from the observer. Authority: Thomas Hardy, "The ship was smalling on the horizon." So there!

Here is a nice little piece on the OED from the BBC. Seems to fit in with discussing dictionaries, so I thought I'd toss it out there.

"Whinging Pom"? How very British, and I have not the slightest clue! My first thought at seeing the heading was those things my granddaughter went around swinging when she was on the freshman dance squad, i.e. pom-poms. My second picture was Muffin, a Pomeranian we enjoyed for ten or twelve years. And I can indeed see it as short for pomegranates. But what in the ever loving blue-eyed world is a whinging pom?

Oh- "everyone has heard of the New Model Army." that means I must haver, but I can't for the life of me remember it.

Gonna need an English to American dictionary to translate English etymologists.

Perry, you can curse the darkness or light a candle. Go to your browser and type in "whinging pom". Enlightenment is just a step away. I guarantee enlightenment, not satisfaction.

Done, and the pom part was the more fascinating. The winging pom is a Britisher who is always griping. A pom is Aussie slang for a Britisher with mixed ideas for derivations. The one I like starts with being short for pomegranite, since new immigrants easily sunburned and turned red like the fruit. There's another rhyming slang version from immigrants = "Jimmy Grant," which perhaps borrowed on the pomegranate theme.