Friday, May 25, 2007

Surely Mc JOB was a hip-hop artist

There's an entirely artificial campaign (stirred up by You-Know-Who) to rid the Oxford English dictionary of the word "McJob".

I understand that Merriam-Webster in the US is being similarly pressured and no doubt wherever there is a potential market for pressed cow-pats of nearly-meat in flavour-free buns, there will be McLawyers earning their money.

I wonder if the on-line dictionaries can be bullied. For example, at the moment dictionary.com has the definition :-
an unstimulating, low-wage job with few benefits, esp. in a service industry.

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[Origin: 1991, Americanism; coined by Douglas Coupland (b. 1961) in the novel Generation X]
Can they be forced to remove or amend it ?

They also quote The American Heritage Dictionary definition which goes to the trouble to point out that it's jobs in mass-production industries like McDonalds that are being alluded to. The word isn't getting at McDonalds exclusively, and it doesn't rule out the possibility that there is more to McDonalds than the obesity production line.

If all else fails there are the "open source" sources of information like wikipedia and its little brother wiktionary, which exist in most world languages, and you would hope are safe from Corporate Interference.

Well, let's see ...

While I was checking the French version of wiktionary I noticed their definition of "McJob" was missing.

So I helpfully added a translation of the OED entry.

Let's see how long it takes for a McDonalds stooge to overwrite it.

1 comment:

Kenny said...

I knew you would pick up on this one. Can I say "red rag to a bull"?