+++ /dev/null
- OSPD ORIGINS AND CURRENCY\r
-ÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜ\r
-\r
-\r
-One of the results of the researches that have taken place in producing\r
-the ENABLE2K word lists is documentation of the deficiencies of the OSPD\r
-(the Official Scrabble Player's Dictionary). Notably, the ENABLE2K\r
-OSPDADD list includes over 6500 words which ought to be present in the\r
-OSPD, but are not. During work on the most recent revision of ENABLE2K,\r
-I became interested in the opposite question, namely, how many words in\r
-OSPD were mistakes, that is, words which should not have been included\r
-according to the original criteria by which the OSPD was constructed.\r
-\r
-It is beyond my power to answer that question, as OSPD was assembled from\r
-a number of out-of-print dictionaries, such as the Merriam-Webster\r
-Collegiate 9th edition and the American Heritage College Dictionary\r
-2nd edition, which I do not own. In place of this question, I have\r
-tried to determine instead what words of OSPD have become stale, that\r
-is, are not included in recent dictionaries of the sort from which OSPD\r
-was composed. After much labor, I have produced a list showing, for\r
-each OSPD word, a contemporary dictionary in which it may be found, or\r
-the absence of any. Additionally, after haunting eBay for some months,\r
-I have come into possession of the 1973 Funk and Wagnall's College\r
-Dictionary, which was one of the primary sources of the original OSPD,\r
-and which has enabled me to reduce the number of words of completely\r
-unknown provenance to a small fraction of the total.\r
-\r
-The result of these researches is the COSSPD.LST file. This file\r
-contains all the words of OSPD, plus those of OSPDADD.LST and the\r
-OSPD-eligible words from MW10ADD.LST. Each word is preceded by two\r
-characters, indicating where a definition of (or reference to) the\r
-word is to be found. The first character supplies a historical\r
-perspecive on the word, while the second character provides a more\r
-recent perspective. The encoding of this information is described\r
-later in this document.\r
-\r
-A summary of statistics derived from COSSPD.LST follows. I find it\r
-noteworthy that each of the source dictionaries has contributed a\r
-significant fraction of the total.\r
-\r
-Note that each category is limited to words not in any previous category,\r
-except where stated otherwise. (See below for explanation of the\r
-dictionary acronyms.)\r
-\r
-Of the 100940 OSPD words,\r
-\r
- . 70861 words (70.2 %) are found in both MW10 and another recent\r
- dictionary.\r
- . 3215 words (3.2 %) are found solely in MW10.\r
- . 7226 words (7.2 %) are found in RHWCD2.\r
- . 3747 words (3.7 %) are found in AHD3 or AHD4. Most of these\r
- (3090) are also found in AHCD3.\r
- . 3478 words (3.4 %) are found in WNWCD3 or WNWCD4.\r
- . 752 words (0.7 %) are found in RHWCD1.\r
- . 5725 words (5.7 %) are found in the 1973 F&WCD.\r
- . 3329 words (3.3 %) were not found in any OSPD source I consulted.\r
- . Of the words in the previous two categories, 520 (0.5 %) are\r
- to be found in EWED1. The rest are the words I refer to as\r
- "stale".\r
- . 2605 words (2.6 %) are inflections of words not explicitly\r
- supported by the OSPD sources, including inflections for words\r
- whose part of speech is omitted. Of these, 1055 are listed by\r
- NI3. Over half of the total (1303) are inflections of words\r
- from F&WCD.\r
-\r
-COSSPD.LST also contains 6754 words from recent dictionary editions.\r
-These words are eligible for OSPD but are not present, either due to\r
-oversight or because they were added after the most recent OSPD was\r
-compiled. Statistics on these words are as follows:\r
-\r
- . 191 words (2.8 %) are from MW10.\r
- . 1781 words (26.4 %) are from RHWCD2.\r
- . 1882 words (27.9 %) are from AHD3 or AHD4.\r
- . 418 words (6.2 %) are from WNWCD3 or WNWCD4.\r
- . 1847 words (27.3 %) are from EWED1.\r
- . 625 words (9.3 %) are from RHWCD1.\r
- . 10 words (0.1 %) are additional inflections of OSPD words I\r
- believe to be correct, but which are not listed in any of the\r
- OSPD sources.\r
-\r
-The file STALE.LST contains the "stale words" referred to above. These\r
-are the OSPD words for which no recent source (of the size of MW10 or\r
-RHWCD2) could be found, and their inflections. A few of these words,\r
-such as "fishbone", "lima" and "unmended", are still current, and their\r
-omission from recent dictionaries seems rather surprising, but by and\r
-large they are extremely obscure, and unlikely to be missed by any but\r
-the most fanatical word game devotees.\r
-\r
-The annotations of COSSPD.LST and their meanings are as follows:\r
-\r
- = - Indicates a word found in MW10. (See note 1.)\r
- . - Indicates a word found in the Random House Webster's College\r
- Dictionary 2nd edition (RHWCD2).\r
- &,@ - Indicates a word found in an American Heritage dictionary.\r
- (See note 2).\r
- > - Indicates a word found in Webster's New World College\r
- Dictionary, 3rd or 4th edition (WNWCD3/4).\r
- % - Indicates a word found in the 1973 Funk and Wagnall's College\r
- Dictionary (F&WCD) (first column only).\r
- # - Indicates a word found in the Encarta World English Dictionary,\r
- first edition (EWED1) (second column only).\r
- : - Indicates a word found in the Random House Webster's College\r
- Dictionary 1st edition (RHWCD1). (See note 3.)\r
- " - Indicates an inflection not found in or implied by any source\r
- dictionary, but endorsed by the Merriam-Webster New International\r
- 3 (NI3) CD-ROM. (See notes 4 through 6.)\r
- ^ - Indicates an inflection not found in or implied by any source\r
- dictionary, and not shown by the NI3 CD-ROM. (See notes 4\r
- and 5.)\r
- ` - Indicates a British variant of an included word not explicitly\r
- mentioned by any of the source dictionaries. (See note 7.)\r
- - - Indicates a word still in the published OSPD3, but which was\r
- removed by the TWL98 reform.\r
- + - Indicates a word not present in OSPD (first column only).\r
- blank - Indicates a word not in any of these categories. In column\r
- 1, a blank indicates that I could not find the word in any\r
- historical source (omitting Encarta); while in column 2 it\r
- indicates it could not be found in any modern source (omitting\r
- the Funk and Wagnall's dictionary).\r
-\r
-Notes:\r
-\r
-1. If a word is annotated with "=" in both columns, it indicates the\r
-word was not found in any modern source other than MW10. (About 65 %\r
-of the words are shown as "=.", meaning they are listed by both MW10 and\r
-RHWCD2.)\r
-\r
-2. The "&" symbol has a slightly different meaning in the two columns.\r
-According to the Scrabble FAQ, the American Heritage source dictionary\r
-for OSPD was the American Heritage College Dictionary (AHCD3). In\r
-researching ENABLE2K, I have instead generally used the full American\r
-Heritage Dictionary (AHCD3/4), which is available on CD-ROM. In the\r
-second column, "&" indicates this dictionary. In the first column, "&"\r
-indicates the American Heritage College Dictionary, and "@" is used to\r
-reference words listed in the full American Heritage Dictionary, but not\r
-in the College Dictionary. Also note that this list uses both the 3rd\r
-and 4th editions of the full American Heritage Dictionary, but only the\r
-3rd edition of the College Dictionary, as the 4th edition was not\r
-released until this work was almost completed.\r
-\r
-3. I should probably regard the Random House Webster's College 1st\r
-edition as now "stale", as the last printing was in 1995. I have\r
-decided not to do so on the basis that many copies are still in use,\r
-and also because this is a very fine dictionary which I hate to write\r
-off. Thousands of words from the 1st edition were removed from the\r
-2nd, and it is the only "current" source for many of them.\r
-\r
-4. As anyone who has looked at PLURALS.DOC knows, the question of\r
-validating inflections is very complex and vexing. I did not want to\r
-complicate these OSPD researches further with trying to ascertain the\r
-validity of all inflections listed in OSPD. Therefore, I adopted an\r
-agnostic policy for inflections. If a word was shown in a source\r
-dictionary without inflections, I assumed the inflections were regular,\r
-even if I knew better. As a simple example, I am well aware that the\r
-plural of "fireman" is "firemen". But MW10 lists "fireman" without\r
-showing an explicit plural, leading me to treat "firemen" as not shown\r
-in MW10, even though the compilers of that volume certainly intended it\r
-to be implied. This has sometimes had the effect of making some of\r
-the inflections of a word appear to have a different source from the\r
-word itself.\r
-\r
-5. "^" has a secondary meaning. Some of the source dictionaries\r
-include lists of words with common prefixes, such as "anti-", "pre-"\r
-and "un-", which do not show parts of speech. Inflections of such\r
-words, regular or not, are shown with a "^" or """ annotation unless\r
-some other dictionary shows the appropriate part of speech.\r
-\r
-6. The Merriam-Webster NI3 CD-ROM is a relatively recent addition to\r
-my collection of electronic dictionaries. I was interested to discover\r
-during this research how much effect the contents of NI3 had on OSPD.\r
-Many of the stranger inflections of OSPD, such as "sensiblest" and\r
-"enuresises", are to be found there, and nowhere else. Once I made\r
-this connection, I made a distinction between unsupported inflections\r
-mentioned in NI3 and the remainder. About 1 in 3 of these inflections\r
-showed up in NI3. (The percentage is significantly greater than that\r
-if one excludes the inflections of words without an explicit part of\r
-speech discussed in note 5.)\r
-\r
-7. I remember, when the 2nd edition of OSPD was current, that its cover\r
-boldly proclaimed "Now includes Canadian words!" This led me to suspect\r
-that perhaps it had been "padded" with unsupported British variants of\r
-words. My suspicion was not confirmed. I marked unsupported British\r
-variants of OSPD words with a "`", but there turned out to be relatively\r
-few of them (171). It is more reasonable to suppose that they were\r
-present in some of the earlier editions of the source dictionaries (such\r
-as MW9) than that they were added for marketing reasons.\r
-\r
-\r
-Mendel and I have occasionally been asked to supply definitions of the\r
-words in the ENABLE2K list. We have seen no need to undertake that labor,\r
-as, with the exception of the signature words, all the ENABLE2K words are\r
-defined in either OSPD or in MW10. However, we must admit that we have\r
-not provided definitions of the words in the various supplemental lists,\r
-which derive from multiple sources. It should now be noted that, for\r
-the subset of supplemental words eligible for inclusion in OSPD, the\r
-COSSPD.LST file helps meet that need. For any unfamiliar short word not\r
-listed in OSPD, its COSSPD.LST entry indicates a specific current\r
-dictionary in which a definition can be found, all of which are\r
-available online, with the exception of RHWCD1. (And the RHWCD1\r
-words can generally also be found in the Random House Unabridged\r
-Dictionary, which is available on CD-ROM.)\r
-\r
-\r
-A final note is an explanation of the file name COSSPD.LST. COSSPD is\r
-an acronym for Contemporary Open Source Scrabble Player's Dictionary,\r
-which is the name I have given to the collection of words from\r
-COSSPD.LST which do not have a blank (or a minus) in the second column.\r
-This list is contemporary because it omits words from long-out-of-print\r
-sources, and includes words from recent sources such as the Encarta\r
-dictionary. The list is "open source" because it makes explicit the\r
-origin of its contents; every word can be checked (and corrected, if\r
-mistakes are found). Because of these two characteristics, I believe\r
-it be superior to the OSPD, both for practical use and for fulfilling\r
-the original intent behind its creation.\r
-\r
-\r
-\r
-\r
-Scrabble is a trademark of the Milton Bradley Co., Inc.\r
-The OSPD is a trademark of the Milton Bradley Co., Inc.\r
-Encarta is a trademark of the Microsoft Corp.\r
-\r
-\r
---Alan Beale\r
projects / deb_pkgs / scowl.git / blobdiff