Talk:Merriam-Webster

From Conservapedia

Several of these so-called "errors" are absurd. To wit:

"The date and description of pogrom is not precisely correct. Merriam-Webster provides a date of 1903 and calls it an organized massacre of helpless people. Pogrom is a Yiddish term used in Russian beginning in the late 1800s to describe an organized campaign of violence (not always a "massacre") against Jewish people in Russia."

Question: Of what language is Merriam-Webster a dictionary? I'll answer that for you: English. Dates of word origin in English dictionaries refer to the year the word entered the English language. Thus it is irrelevant that "pogrom" was "used in Russian beginning in the late 1800s."

"The entry for Yiddish is too narrow in describing it as only a language of Jewish residents and descendants of central and eastern Europe. Yiddish is spoken worldwide."

Hogwash. Except for a very small number of scholars and hobbyists, Yiddish is spoken only descendants of Jews from Central and Eastern Europe. It is indeed true that it is spoken worldwide -- by descendants of European Jews, like the dictionary article says. --Scalito1776 00:55, 17 March 2007 (EDT)