Noncompositional

Working at a lexicographic outfit, one becomes rather quickly acquainted with some unfortunate inadequacies of many print dictionaries. A paradigm case is the word risk, noun and verb, a rich semantic analysis of which is given in a series of papers by Sue Atkins and Chuck Fillmore.

But sometimes the missteps that dictionaries take are not quite of the need-to-write-an-academic-paper-about-it caliber. Take, for instance, the definition of the cardinal number 2 in the 10th edition of the Concise Oxford Dictionary (now the Concise Oxford English Dictionary). It reads,

equivalent to the product of one and one; one less than three

The product of one and one? What could they be thinking? Okay, maybe their entry for product will clear things up. Here are the relevant bits:

a result of an action or process [...] MATHEMATICS: a quantity obtained by multiplying quantities together, or from an analogous algebraic operation

Hmm. Well, the part that should have been most relevant (i.e., multiplication) clearly doesn’t help their case. I suppose one could make up a story about product of X and Y meaning “what you get when you put X and Y together.” But that’s certainly not the use that is primed in the domain of mathematics. Oh well. In later editions, the definition seems to have been changed.

The next mistake is interesting. One particular edition of the American Heritage dictionary (I don’t have it on me now) gives this as the first meaning of information:

The act of informing or the condition of being informed; communication of knowledge.

Now, maybe other people are strange and have this meaning, but this is a totally ridiculous definition for me. I would never think to say something like after the information of your customer base on/about recent changes, you should blah blah blah. Now, it’s true that this used to be a legitimate meaning of the word; in fact, the original meaning. But I suppose that the information of AHD on this topic never happened.

Up through the 1800s the “act of” meaning seemed to exist, with citations in the OED like: By way of Information or Notification of the Thing to Him. But surely this meaning has been called “rare” or “obsolete”? Well, no. And that’s because the OED has cited the phrase for your information as an instantiation of the old meaning. Hmm… I’d call that an act of desperation. I certainly don’t analyze that use of the word as being “the act of informing”. Rather it’s parallel to something like for your curiosity. I can certainly analyze that use with the meaning the OED thinks it has, and the semantics works out fine, I suppose (cf for your satisfaction, (we did it) for the movie’s production). But since it’s equally fine with the “piece of information” meaning, why not call it that and be rid of the “act of” meaning altogether?

(And FYI (ahem), the other meaning of inform/information, e.g., linguistics informed the discussion, were also used up until around the same time: Our reason and affections, which God has given us for the information of our judgment and the conduct of our lives)