1079. Ever wonder what labels like "informal," "archaic," or "offensive" mean in a dictionary entry? We explain how different dictionaries use labels to describe when, where, and how to use words. Then, we explore why so many babies say "dada" first and why babies say "mama" almost everywhere.
1079. Ever wonder what labels like "informal," "archaic," or "offensive" mean in a dictionary entry? We explain how different dictionaries use labels to describe when, where, and how to use words. Then, we explore why so many babies say "dada" first and why babies say "mama" almost everywhere.
The "dictionary labels" segment was written by Susan Herman, a retired U.S. government multidisciplined language analyst, analytic editor, and instructor.
The "mama" segment was written by Valerie Fridland, a professor of linguistics at the University of Nevada in Reno and the author of "Like Literally, Dude: Arguing for the Good in Bad English." You can find her at valeriefridland.com.
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Grammar Girl here. I’m Mignon Fogarty, your friendly guide to the English language. Today, we're going to talk about what you can learn about words from dictionary labels and why the words for "mother" are so similar in so many languages.Â
by Susan Herman
Dictionaries are one of the most important tools writers have at their fingertips, besides a good style guide. They not only tell us what words mean; they also tell us the history of those words, how to pronounce them, and how they are used in different contexts. Further, each dictionary uses its own set of labels that give specific information on how words are used, such as "informal" and "slang." As Georgia Southern University professor, writer, and editor Richard Nordquist explained in an article for ThoughtCo, labels and usage notes indicate "… particular limitations on the use of a word, or particular contexts or registers [or how we use language differently in different circumstances, whether in speaking, writing, or even sign language]." Over the years, these labels have expanded in line with our changing language.
First, let's touch briefly on the history of dictionaries and how labels came to be. According to Oxford Dictionaries, the earliest dictionaries were nothing more than "glossaries that translated Latin words into Old English, the form of English spoken before about 1100 AD." The first monolingual dictionaries appeared in about 1600 and mostly defined the "hard words" in English. By the 1800s, dictionaries started to expand their entries to include pronunciation, word origin, and parts of speech. In the 19th and 20th centuries, they became more inclusive and began to cover "… types of language that had not previously been considered appropriate, for example slang, regional words, or technical jargon."
Today, dictionaries focus on how words are used in the real world. Most modern dictionaries have moved away from being prescriptive – stating how words "should" be used – and are descriptive – meaning they simply describe current usage. Most dictionaries are now online, which means they can offer even more, like multimedia and interactive content. But their basic purpose is still the same: to tell us what words mean.
Of course, different dictionaries vary in the number and types of labels used. In his analysis of Samuel Johnson's 1755 "Dictionary of the English Language" in the "English Diachronic Pragmatics" journal, University of Milan professor Giovanni Iamartino points out that usage labels and notes have been around almost as long as dictionaries have. But labels in Johnson's and other early dictionaries were more pragmatic, meaning they were more about the word than the speaker and how they were using it. As Iamartino puts it, "… in the earlier phases such labels and notes played a stigmatizing role, or at least were monitors of correct usage, [while] in modern lexicography their function is simply descriptive."Â
So now let's look at some examples of dictionary labels and usage notes. For purposes of this discussion, we'll focus mainly on two well-known dictionaries – Oxford and Merriam-Webster – but we'll also touch on some others.Â
Merriam-Webster uses three types of status labels "… to signal that a word or a sense of a word is not part of the standard vocabulary of English": temporal, regional, and stylistic. Its temporal labels include "obsolete" and "archaic."Â
"Obsolete" means the word hasn't been used in that sense since 1755, like "perdu," meaning "a soldier assigned to extremely hazardous duty," which carries the "obsolete" label in its entry. If the thing being described is obsolete, Merriam-Webster will note that in the definition itself, like one of the definitions of "catapult," which reads “an ancient military device for hurling missiles." And the entry for "catapult" also has different, non-obsolete definitions listed too.Â
"Archaic," on the other hand, is used for "a word or sense once in common use [but] found today only sporadically or in special contexts," like "goody," meaning "a usually married woman of lowly station."Â
Regional labels, as the name implies, indicate where a word or term is used. You may also see "chiefly" before some of these labels, to indicate that the word has limited usage outside of that region, And some words have double regional labels, meaning they are used in both areas. For example, "banquette," when used to mean "sidewalk," carries the label "Southern U.S."; and "dinkum," meaning "authentic" or "genuine," includes the label "Australia and New Zealand."
Merriam-Webster uses the stylistic labels "disparaging," "offensive," "obscene," and "vulgar" for "… words or senses that in common use are intended to hurt or shock or that are likely to give offense even when they are used without such an intent." For example, the entry for "lame," in the sense of "unable or only partially able to use a body part and especially a limb," includes the double label "dated, now usually offensive" and a whole usage paragraph to explain why it is problematic. And another stylistic label is "nonstandard" for "…words or senses that are disapproved by many but that have some currency in reputable contexts." A great example of nonstandard usage is the word "irregardless," which we discussed in Episode 954.Â
Besides these three main categories, Merriam-Webster sometimes uses a subject label or guide phrase to explain how and when a word is specifically used. For example, the entry for "antimagnetic," meaning "having a balance unit composed of alloys that will not remain magnetized" includes the guide phrase "of a watch." And this dictionary will also sometimes include a usage note for "function" words – like prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections – that are hard to define and carry little meaning in and of themselves. For example, the entry for "wow," when used as an interjection, includes the note "used to express strong feeling, such as pleasure or surprise," which is more of a description than a definition.
The other "Big Daddy" of dictionaries, the Oxford English Dictionary, sorts its usage labels into three categories: register, region, and subject. Its register labels are extensive and more detailed than in other dictionaries. The temporal labels "archaic" – "used in old-fashioned or historical contexts" – and "dated" – "old-fashioned, but used within the last 100 years" – fall into this category. Like Merriam-Webster, Oxford's register labels include "derogatory" and "offensive." But also on the list are several types of slang – "vulgar," "military," "nautical," and even "rhyming" and "theatrical" – and some that are more culturally based, like "dialect," "euphemistic," "humorous," "rare," and "ironic," among others.
Oxford uses region labels similarly to Merriam-Webster but does not call out words used in two different regions. Its subject labels – such as "art," "ecology," "finance," "medicine," are very specific and can help dictionary users figure out jargon and context. The Oxford Learner's Dictionary of Academic English includes a long list of labels that indicate academic subject areas, including "anatomy," "biology," "economics," "engineering," "finance," "mathematics," and my favorite – "linguistics."Â
In contrast to Merriam-Webster and Oxford, the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary has a shorter list of labels but does include some interesting ones not found in other dictionaries, like "child's word/expression," "female" and "male" (for words like "starlet" and "effeminate"), "polite usage," and "approving" and "disapproving" (for words like "feisty" and "newfangled").
So next time you crack open – or more likely, click on – a dictionary, pay attention to any labels and how they can help guide your usage. You might learn something new!
That segment was written by Susan K. Herman, a retired multidisciplined language analyst, editor, and instructor for the federal government
by Valerie Fridland
It’s easy to think about all the things mothers have done for us, but there is one pretty important thing that we offspring have done for them: Give her the name by which she’s known.
“Mama” is one of the earliest words that babies utter. Moreover, it is not unique to any one language, but one of the most universally shared words across languages. From French "maman" to Russian "mama" to Chinese "mama," it’s fairly hard to find babies calling a mother by any other name. So, what gives?
When we consider the first sounds that babies babble, it typically involves one of three vowel sounds, “ee,” “ah” or “euw,” and consonants like P, B, D, T, K, G, N, or M. These sounds have been found to be among those babbled earliest regardless of which language a baby will end up speaking, which is related to the articulatory and perceptual characteristics of these sounds.
That means, when babies start playing around with putting speech sounds together into rudimentary syllables, they draw from those vowels and consonants, giving us cute baby mutterings like “dada,” “papa,” “nana,” or “mama.” Of course, little Elvia has no idea what she is saying, or that words are even a thing yet, but mom and dad are certainly cued in to making these mutterings into something meaningful — in other words, names for themselves.
As a result, the similarity in baby words for mothers and fathers across languages can be understood as what naturally happens when baby babbles meet the ears of eager parents. Since all babies are pretty constrained in terms of the early sounds they are able to say, we get the same recurrent patterns, namely, “dadas,” “babas” and “papas” or “mamas” and “nanas,” that come to be heard as parental monikers.
In what might be the ultimate insult to all exhausted-from-lack-of-sleep mothers everywhere, babies have a habit of uttering “dada” (or "papa" or "baba") before “mama.” Considering mothers still do the lion’s share of work related to infant care in most cultures, this father-first inclination certainly runs counter to what we might expect. But moms can rest assured, it’s all about the sounds, not you.
While sounds like “d,” “t,” “p” and “b” are all oral sounds, “m” is what is referred to as a nasal sound, meaning air flows through the nose. Though all appear early in baby babble, oral sounds are babbled more often than nasal sounds, so it is likely that the “dada” bent of young babies is simply the result of this greater frequency, not greater fondness.
The bigger question is why there is such ubiquity across languages in linking “dada,” “papa” or “tata” with fathers while mothers are almost always “mama.” After all, if moms are around more and “dada” is uttered earlier, why are more moms not called “dada” in languages around the world?
A number of scholars have suggested that the answer lies in the roles that mothers play as the primary nourisher as well as primary nurturer. In other words, mothers are the ones who breastfeed, and the sounds babies tend to make when suckling at the breast are along the lines of “mmmm,” not “dddddd.”
As a result, these nasal sounds have more of a tendency to become associated with mothers’ roles rather than fathers’, giving rise to the prevalence of “mama” for the female parent in even unrelated languages. The idea here is that babies make “mmm” sounds when hungry or needing comfort, which mom recognizes as her call sign and responds. The association of “m” sounds with the breast is also carried over into the words "mammal" and "mammary," both of which pertain to a female’s production of milk.
But if we start out with a “mama,” how do we end up with the more grown-up version “mother”?
Mother is simply “mama” with a bit more polish added on, mainly by way of the attaching of a kinship suffix "-ter" to the “ma” that was already around — in other words, in Latin “mater” or Sanskrit “matar,” both older languages descended from the same original source language as English.
Sure, the English “mother” has undergone a sound change or two in the intervening centuries since it was “modor” in Old English, but you can still find the “ma” in a mother every time she gives a hug, no matter how grown up you are.
That segment was written by Valerie Fridland, a professor of linguistics at the University of Nevada in Reno and the author of "Like, Literally, Dude: Arguing for the Good in Bad English." You can find her at valeriefridland.com.
And finally, here's a familect from Lynn.
Hi, this is Lynn Glazer. I'm enjoying and have become addicted to your Grammar Girl podcast.
I'm a former English teacher at the college level. But at any rate, my familects were, I don't know if you can use some of these families or not, but in our family, instead of saying something was dumb or somebody, we weren't supposed to say someone was dumb, but if something was dumb, we would say that was D-U. If it was stupid, we'd say that was S-T, S-T-U, S-T-U. And then if we were having leftovers or talking about leftovers, because my mom used leftovers a lot growing up, we'd say, "Yeah, we had LOs tonight, or we're going to have LOs," and we knew what we were talking about in our family.
I guess that was our, that's what I guess some of the things from my family that I can remember at 82 years old.
And I still use them today. I use them with my own children, and I try to use them with my partner now that I'm a widow, and he doesn't understand, but my family certainly did.
So I certainly enjoy your podcast. Thank you. Continue the good work. Bye now.
Thanks so much, Lynn! Your family would have been right at home with the people who came up with "OK" for "all correct" that I talked about a couple of months ago. And thanks for all you did teaching English in college.
If you want to share the story of your familect, a word or phrase that you only use with your friends or family, leave a message on the voicemail line at 83-321-4-GIRL or leave a voice message on WhatsApp, and if you want that number or link later, you can always find them in the show notes. Â
Grammar Girl is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast, and we have lots of other shows. Tomorrow, the Nutrition Diva is talking about the pros and cons of juicing. Check it out. Again that's the Nutrition Diva.
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I'm Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl and author of the tip-a-day book "The Grammar Daily." That's all. Thanks for listening.
The following references for the "mama" segment did not appear in the podcast but are included here for completeness.
Jakobson, R. (1962). Why 'mama' and 'papa'? In Roman Jakobson: selected writings vol. I.Phonology. The Hague: Mouton.
Bancel, P.J., & Matthey de l’Etang, A. (2005). Kin tongue. A study of kin nursery terms in relation to language acquisition, with a historical and evolutionary perspective. Mother Tongue, 9, 171–190
MacNeilage, P.F. (2008). The origin of speech. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.