The third edition of the American Heritage Dictionary has no morals !" exclaims William J. Slattery of Jamestown, R.I., who is otherwise entranced by the new dictionary.
He is mistaken about the absence of morals ; that noun does not have its own separate entry, but it is entered under the adjective moral , and is crisply defined as "rules or habits of conduct, especially of sexual conduct, with reference to standards of right and wrong." Useful synonymy is added to differentiate among the adjectives moral, ethical, virtuous and righteous .
The noun morals is there in American Heritage, in boldface. It is also found as the secondary sense of the noun moral in Merriam-Webster's Ninth New Collegiate and is alluded to, without boldface, as the plural of moral in Webster's New World.
However, Ralph G. Beaman of Boothwyn, Pa., wants to know why I was pleased with American Heritage, a dictionary that contains up-to-date items like spin-doctor and cocooning but lacks such other modern favorites as glass ceiling, stocking stuffer, party platter, tapa (in the sense of a snack), top 40, nose tackle, baked Alaska and ta-dah .
I don't even have to call Anne Soukhanov, its executive editor, to check: these may be nonce words, soon to be gone with the roller blades . A word, before being lexed, has to establish itself. (The verb to lex has just been used here for the first time, I think, and is unlikely to make it to a second.)
In a few years, will bra still retain its new sense of "protection for the front of a utility vehicle"? Will Mylar fade with Madonna? Who can say? Meanwhile, dictionaries also serve that only stand and wait; comes the next edition of any major dictionary, and -- ta-dah! -- a stocking stuffer for Christmas. ( Xmas is in.) FREE LUNCH
WHO COINED "THERE AIN'T NO SUCH thing as a free lunch"?
We know that free lunch was advertised in Western bars in the 1840's, meaning that the eats were free to those who bought drinks. But when did the awakening come, encapsulated in the aphorism, that the price of the food was included in the price of the required drink?
The economist Milton Friedman popularized it in the name of a 1975 book, but frequently disclaims coinage. Fans of the science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein point to his use of the phrase in his 1966 novel "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress"; it was there that its long acronym was coined, "tanstaafl." But, as Ralph Keyes shows in his icon-busting "Nice Guys Finish Seventh," the no-free-lunch phrase pops up in the writings of two columnists, Burton Crane and Walter Morrow, dating back to 1949.
George W. Bardes of Cos Cob, Conn., noted a passage in Robert A. Caro's 1974 book "The Power Broker," a biography of Robert Moses, which casts more light on the phrase's introduction into politics. He is writing about the beginning, in 1934, of the mayoralty of Fiorello La Guardia, New York's "Little Flower":
"Bounding up the front steps of City Hall on the morning of his Inauguration Day, he had stopped, a roly-poly figure in a ridiculous black hat and a rumpled black suit," goes the Caro account, "and had shaken his little fist at its white Georgian elegance and shouted, ' E finita la cuccagna !' ('No more free lunch!'), a phrase which, a friend explained, the Mayor was using to promise 'The party is over! No more graft!' "
This usage provides a nice transition between the early, literal meaning of free lunch ("a bartender's spread to entice paying customers") and its present sense of "economic lesson" (you are paying for that so-called free lunch).
All that remains now is to find the first written citation of "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch." The finder won't get the Nobel Prize for economics, but will be fed great heaps of pickles and pretzels at no cost (to him or her) at gatherings of political etymologists. HOOKOLOGY WON'T DO
A WORD-WANTED AD WAS RUN HERE LAST year by Joe Califano, president of the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University. He sought the name for the study of addiction, received 155 responses from Lexicographic Irregulars and is mulling over these finalists:
Addictionology , which is quickly understandable but seems long and banal.
Pharmacosiology , from phar maco- , "drug," and -osis , "disease." I don't like the "cosy" in the middle.
Deditology from the Latin de ditus , "addicted to," and has a warning connection to "dead" in the first syllable.
Etheology , from the Greek ethos , "habit."
If you want to vote, or top these, write to Joe at CASA, 152 West 57th Street, New York, N.Y. 10019. Help your fellow person; be a coiner. STATUS REPORT
"THE ISSUE," PRESIDENT Clinton told a news conference, "is whether men and women who can and have served with real distinction should be excluded from military service solely on the basis of their status ."
He went on to announce the staying of discharges "based on status alone." Later, his press aide minimized the numbers of people to which the action would be applied "solely based on status ."
Used this way, the word status , which means "condition; position relative to others; legal character," is a fuzzifier -- not quite a euphemism, but a bureaucratic substitute that takes the sting out of the word or phrase being avoided.
What Mr. Clinton means, and could bring himself to say, is sexual preference (the term preferred by those who think homosexuality is usually a proclivity reinforced by conscious choice) or sexual orientation (preferred by those who think homosexuality is primarily inborn). These phrases deal with condition, not behavior, and can thus be referred to delicately as status in contrast to activity .
Let's take a stand: Is the fuzzifier pronounced STAT-us, as President Clinton prefers, or STAY-tus, preferred in Merriam-Webster's Ninth New Collegiate, American Heritage Third and the Random House Webster's?
Clintonites find support in the third edition of Webster's New World, which reversed its previous position and chose STAT-us. Victoria Neufeldt, who edited that dictionary for Simon & Schuster and is now with Merriam-Webster (the status of lexicographers is fluid) says that the more frequent pronunciation in the United States has become STAT-us. "It parallels the change from DAY-ta to DAT-a among younger people," says Ms. Neufeldt, "especially computer people. I'm from Canada, and still say STAY-tus and DAY-ta, so I guess I'm hopelessly behind the times."
Reserve judgment; in a few years, we'll review the status of the data.
Drawing