From: "Thomas, Graeme" <thogr04@mail.cai.com>
Date: Wed, 24 Sep 1997 05:10:51 -0400
Subject: RE: SOWPODS as a METAPHOR
Message-id: <9709240913.AA08548@cai.com>
Jim Miller wrote:
For the 3s, I calculate 25% as about the percentage of 3s with which I, as a reasonably literate person, was unfamiliar before I started playing Scrabble.This surprises me, as I'd put the figure in the UK as about half of the 3lw being unfamiliar, at least to the point of being unsure whether they were in the book.
Moreover, glancing at the British-only words, I am familiar with very, very few of them -- again, coming from the standpoint of a well-educated, literate North American. This isn't surprising, originating as they do in a dictionary published in a different culture across the ocean.I am not at all surprised that Jim finds the OSW-only words for the most part unfamiliar. The familiar 3lw are all in OSPD, as these are the common words at the core of the language. It's just as bad going the other way: almost none of the OSPD-only words are familiar to me.
Again, cultural relevance matters, a lot.I don't think that it's the cultural relevance. English is an enormous language, with a relatively small core and a lot of fluff on the outside. Even expert lexicographers get confused about what is in the core and what isn't. To get a good picture of this, look at the words in OSPD which appear only in a couple (or even 1) of the source dictionaries. Clearly a majority of collegiate dictionary editors felt that such words were not worth putting in their dictionaries, and yet they are in OSPD.
Dan Pratt once posted a list of all the 2lw he could find, with their presence in each of a large number of dictionaries noted. I seem to remember over 400 such words! Even SOWPODS only has 121 of them.
Graeme