Online foreign language dictionaries

Who needs Google Translate?

For translations from German words online I use Leo, operated by the sonorously-named Technischen Universität München. It's got technical vocabulary, many senses for each entry, and user forums that are genuinely useful.

Tufts University runs Perseus, which has Lewis and Short's Latin dictionary, besides others. It's also got a "Word Study Tool" here, so that those of us short on Latinity can look up puzzling forms.  It offers Greek, Arabic and Old Norse too.

Any other suggestions for reliable resources, for any language?

Kill all the "Juris Doctorates"

It's a very common error to call the J.D. (law) degree a "Juris Doctorate"; lawyers sometimes make this mistake too, even in print.

"Juris Doctorate" can't be right because it mixes Latin "juris" and English "doctorate" (the Latin word would be doctoratus). "J.D." is short for juris doctor, "doctor of law." It's not doctor of "laws" either--"juris" is singular for "of law."  The venerable Stanford Law School says that "J.D." is "doctor of jurisprudence," but there's no evidence on websites or in dictionaries of "doctor jurisprudentiae" in the U.S.--but I guess "doctor of jurisprudence" can be an acceptable (if arrogant and maybe imprecise) translation of "juris doctor."

So do you address lawyer with a juris doctor degree as "Doctor," as you do someone who has a philosophiae doctor or a medicinae doctor degree?  It may be common in Europe, but it's really not done here in the U.S.--it's even considered unethical in many states.  Have you ever heard of a lawyer calling himself "Doctor?"

"It happened on a day"

Following up on the last post: I was reminded of the archaic idiom "on a day," meaning the unspecific "one day" (and not as in "on a day in March" or "on a day to be appointed," which use "on" in a totally unidiomatic sense).

"And it fell on a day, that Elisha passed to Shunem, where was a great woman; and shee constrained him to eate bread: And so it was, that as oft as he passed by, hee turned in thither to eate bread." -- K.J.V., 2 Kings 3:7

“Come back to my blog on tomorrow”

A couple times, a few months ago, natives of Washington, D.C. said in conversation that they’d see me “on tomorrow.”

This was a new one on me, and it turns out that “on tomorrow” is dated to 1829 in Virginia in the DARE and OED; DARE features “on yesterday,” too.  DARE has cites from New York and Massachusetts speakers after 1900, so it may not just be a southern usage. 

I wonder how long it will take for “on tomorrow” to become standard American English.  See also . . . I actually kind of like it, at least.  It leaves a much better taste in my mouth than “y’all.”

Curious Ethnic Slurs From the Left Coast

Forgive me for the off-color post, but dirty words are the first things one looks for in a dictionary. 

Lexicographers used to be prudish when it came to including sexual, excretion and slur words in their dictionaries, writes Henri Béjoint, Tradition and Innovation in Modern Dictionaries (p. 129, Oxford 1994).  (He also reports one study that shows foreign learners’ second-most searched kind of term is the dirty ones, p. 144)  Béjoint describes his study of whether large American dictionaries of the 1970s neglect or avoid defining fourteen ethnic slurs.  The slurs he searched the dictionaries for are all the typical ones, most of which I won’t mention (I will mention “squarehead,” which I get a kick out of and because its targets can speak for themselves).  Among the words were “skibby” and “gu-gu.” None of the six large dictionaries he studies contains them—not even the dictionaries that contain all ten other slurs.  I’m not surprised—I’ve never heard of these either.  The meanings of skibby and gu-gu are not even vulnerable to quick Google searches.  What’s a skibby?  Am I a skibby?

I doubted I am a gu-gu, at least.  A trip to the local university library has revealed that I am not a skibby—“skibby” is a slur for a Japanese person (from a Japanese word for lewdness that was transferred to Japanese prostitutes and then more widely applied, according to Webster’s Third and the Dictionary of American Regional English).  DARE says it’s “chiefly CA, Pacific NW.”  According to Webster’s Third, a gu-gu or goo-goo is a Philippine islander, chiefly in the speech of Hawaiians.  It’s not in DARE, but is covered in Wentworth and Flexner’s Dictionary of American Slang; the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang says it’s pre-1900.

So there you have it—all Béjoint’s dictionaries were written by easterners.  Perhaps they hadn’t heard of those words any more than I had.  Strange utterances from the land of “hella-cool.”

Some rough contronyms

Contronyms, or Janus words, are those that have two, opposite meanings.  "Cleave"  means to split into halves, or stick two halves together. 

I've always thought that "warm" was a Janus word.  You can give someone a warm greeting or, in what may be a mostly British usage, have a warm--heated, angry--debate.

How about troll?  A troll may sit for hours under his bridge, and a "patent troll" buys up many patents and sits on them, waiting to sue someone who may have (accidentally) infringed a patent.  On the other hand, "troll" is the noun form of the verb "troll," which usually means to move around hunting, for fish or for a date.

And there's "wicked."  You can be a wicked witch or, if you're from Boston, wicked good at doing something.  It's not just in Boston, either--it's in Webster's Third.