Mind your language
I HAVEN'T quite finished reading the new Concise Oxford Dictionary but I have found some of its advice on usage sweetly avuncular (or should I say materteral, since the editrix is a woman?).
For example on of it says: 'Of should not be used instead of have in construc- tions such as You should have asked; He couldn't have known, although in rapid speech they sound the same.' I think we agree with that.
As for off, 'The use of off of for the preposition off, e.g. Lifted it up off of the table, is now standard and should be avoided.' Very well.
Oddly enough, both these misusages occur in Pepys's diaries. He was writing in shorthand and sometimes seemed to have been transcribing, as it were, from internal dictation. That doesn't explain off of which is indeed nowadays an indi- cator of non-U language.
But U-ness is not the COD's only con- sideration. On illnesses of the mind it notes: 'Psychiatric is now often pre- ferred to mental as it is regarded as a less stigmatising term.' Hard to see why.
Similarly, 'The use of the word spastic in the medical sense may be considered offensive as a result of its use as an offensive slang term. To avoid offence, the term cerebral palsy can be used, e.g. She suffers from cerebral palsy rather than She is a spastic.'
I was surprised, then, to see that lep- ers receive no such consideration, amongst whom may still be found 'a person who is shunned for moral or social reasons'. And our old friends the gays are given as an example of current usage: 'The message from gays and les- bians living in rural Ireland was one of a sense of isolation.' I thought that was why people went to live in rural Ireland. No mention is made of how Hotten- tots feel in rural Ireland, but 'Narita is now the preferred name for this peo- ple.' Yet there is no indication of any complication in the use of the word nig- ger, except that it is 'offensive'. That too is the only note on queer, though we all know that blacks and homosexuals (especially in America) are now proudly applying to themselves these labels that they once angrily rejected.
By the way materteral doesn't appear in the COD, so we shall never discover its opinion on how it should be used.
Dot Wordsworth
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