‘Cassette Tape’ Erased From the Dictionary? Rewind That.

'Cassette Tape' Erased Fron the Dictionary? Rewind That.

You may have read that the new 12th edition of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary omits the term “cassette tape” from its entries to make room for a bunch of new Web terms like “sexting,” “retweet” and “woot.” Digital displaces analog, get it? Good story, only it doesn’t appear to be true.

The Time website spread the tale, based on a Huffington Post item. The story was played back around the world before someone thought: “You could look that up.”

Mark Longair walked into a Zürich bookstore, found a copy of the new 1,728-page Concise Oxford English Dictionary, and turned to the Cs. “Cassette tape” is still there, right before “cassia” (“a leguminous tree or plant of warm climates”). What they did take out: “cassette player,” but “cassette” is still in there so you can construct that yourself.

Oxford dictionaries are constructed on historical principles, so older terms are the rule. Besides, millions of audio cassettes are currently in use all over the world. They’re even hip. So rewind that “no cassette tape” story, then hit” erase.”

Short link: http://wp.me/p6sb6-aZw

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Yahoo Buzz | Newsvine

Tags: , , , , , , ,

One Response to “‘Cassette Tape’ Erased From the Dictionary? Rewind That.”

  1. pawsinsd Says:

    Dang, I was still looking for that Art Garfunkel “99 Miles to LA” 8-track tape we listened to 15 times a day in college.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s


%d bloggers like this: