Confronted with unfamiliar words that aren’t defined either by Webster’s or Black’s dictionaries, some lawyers and judges are turning to a street-slang resource, the Urban Dictionary.
It has been used by courts to define terms including “iron” (a handgun), “catfishing” (Internet predators using fabricated identities) and “dap” (the fist-bump alternative to a traditional handshake). But just because the online definitions have popular support, such crowdsourcing can be a recipe for inaccuracy, experts tell the New York Times (reg. req.).
Using definitions developed by popular consensus to define words in court cases “is a terrible idea; they don’t claim to be an authority or a reference,” says senior editor Tom Dazell of the New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English. While he himself is a fan of Urban Dictionary, “there is more chaff than wheat,” he contends, calling it “a lazy person’s resource.”
Definitions, regardless of how respected the resource, can also pose a problem if the person using the terminology meant to say something different than what is conveyed to readers, the newspaper notes. Several years ago, the Nevada Supreme Court said the state’s department of motor vehicles had to issue the vanity plate “HOE.” Although some saw the word differently, motorist William Junge, 62, had picked the term because TAHOE, in honor of his Chevrolet Tahoe, had already been taken.
“That was their interpretation,” he told reporters, referring to the state department of motor vehicles, at the time of the 2009 ruling. “Shame on them.” More.
See: ABA Journal
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Spain
Local time: 19:08
Spanish to English
+ ...
Accurate? No, it isn't. The definitions are usually highly subjective, overly scatalogically-obsessed in many cases and area or culturally specific. As the man says, “there is more chaff than wheat,”.
PS: "Hoe" is a perfectly innocent and useful gardening implement in my part of the world, rather than a lazily mispronounced synonym for strumpet. Nothing to see here folks, move along now...
[Edited at 2013-05-28 10:33 GMT]
United Kingdom
Local time: 18:08
German to English
+ ...
No, it isn't.
See Betteridge's law of headlines, a.k.a. Davis' law.
* * *
BTW, the New York Times article, from which the ABA's piece seems to have been lifted, is far better.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/business/media/urban-dictionary-finds-a-place-in-the-courtroom.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Tom Dalzell, senior editor of The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, is a fan of Urban Dictionary, but he argues that the site has obvious limits.
"Using them in court is a terrible idea; they don’t claim to be an authority or a reference," he said. "Some of the stuff on their site is very good, but there is more chaff than wheat. It is a lazy person’s resource."
The definitions are ranked by popularity, with the idea that democracy will reveal some truth about how the word is really used. "Readers can tell not to put too much faith in a definition that is really unpopular," Mr. Peckham said.
He added: "Dictionaries may be more heavily researched, but the real authority on language and the meaning comes from people who speak the language. The whole point of Urban Dictionary is we are defining our own language as we speak it."
Jesse Sheidlower, editor at large for the Oxford English Dictionary, points out, however, that popular does not mean accurate. "People may like a word because it was posted by their friend or because it was funny," he said. (Mr. Peckham said that private analyses the site has conducted show that "funny" is the No. 1 reason people give for voting for posts.)
United Kingdom
Local time: 18:08
German to English
...then that tells us all we need to know about their profession IM-not very-HO.
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