New Oxford Dictionary

Menagerie, Not Museum, for Words That Live

In his 1755 dictionary Samuel Johnson defined the lexicographer as “a writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words.” Unfortunately Johnson was uncharacteristically wrong. A lexicographer, if any good, is hardly a drudge, and if bad, is hardly harmless. ...
...For included here are 2,500 new entries that treat language more as living menagerie than as natural history museum. Along with restless leg syndrome and flatline come more questionable entries, where use becomes the main criterion for inclusion.

“Generic,” for example, has given birth to a verb that makes even appendicitis seem attractive: “genericize.” Bureaucratic identifications make the cut, however local and obscure: “P45” is defined as a certificate given to an employee in Britain and Ireland “at the end of a period of employment, providing details of his or her tax code.”

But once description trumps prescription and currency eclipses timelessness, it becomes difficult to capture the slippery shifts in tone and fashion that accompany new words. “Ghetto fabulous” is defined here as “pertaining to or favoring an ostentatious style of dress associated with the hip-hop subculture,” though its use now is broader and sometimes more ambiguous. And “ghetto blaster” should probably be marked obs. (for obsolete).

But the biggest difficulties are in the “ historical principles,” which seem to have become historical themselves — held over from the past, only to be jettisoned when inconvenient. This is clearest in the use of quotations. Of course the first O.E.D. was skewed in its choices, reflecting few writers of the 18th century, and offering a selection not fully representative of the language’s powers. But now the O.E.D. does not even pretend to offer “all the great English writers of all ages.”