From the press:

Recognizing the importance of knowing another language besides English, Frederick County school officials are pressing for greater exposure to other dialects. Schools currently offer French, German, Latin and Spanish, with some piloting courses in Chinese and Italian.

Is this purely mistaken diction, or is there precedent for using dialect to mean language?

Maybe their thesaurus is broken. BTW, does anybody besides me see the change of meaning of word thesaurus from treasure box to semasiological dictionary as an indication that the lexical sky is falling. One more semantic change in the lexicon and everything will mean nothing or nothing will mean anything. La!

[Corrected typo.]

This message has been edited. Last edited by: zmježd,

You're in a jovial mood today zmjezhd.

You're in a jovial mood today

Why thank you, Seanahan. I'll take that as a compliment.

Gosh, zmj, I thought "thesaurus" was originally an Anglo-Greek expression meaning "the Lizard."

quote:

BTW, does anybody besides me see the change of meaning of word thesaurus from treasure box to semasiological dictionary as an indication that the lexical sky is falling. One more semantic change in the lexicon and everything will mean nothing or nothing will mean anything.

Zmj, jovial or not, could you please explain that to me?

I can't understand such bad misuse of a word. Wordnerd, where was the quote from?

could you please explain that to me?

Sure. The word thesaurus was borrrowed from the Greek word θησαυρος (thesauros, via Latin) which meant 'treasure box'. Because,as we have been admonished over and over again, words should never be allowed to change meanings, or better yet, because people should never be allowed to change the meanings of words, or still better yet, because the meanings of words should not be allowed to change: thesaurus should not refer to those kinds of dictionaries where the words are not alphabetically arranged (i.e., onomasiological) but are arranged by concept (i.e., semasiological).

Oooohhhh, zmj, now you've gone and opened Pandora's thesaurus!

Kalleh, you asked where the quote came from. You'll find it here; not exactly the major press.