Encarta World English Dictionary. Bloomsbury. 2172pp. £30 in UK
20th Century Words. By John Ayto. Oxford University Press. 626pp. £18.99 in UK
Encarta is not a word. Or, at least, it's not a word that you'll find in a dictionary, even in the Encarta World English Dictionary, which is pretty funny when you think about it. But then there are other funny things about this "first dictionary to reflect the diversity of the English language as it is spoken across the globe", and which "defines words and phrases from a global perspective, rather than the cultural or historical perspective of any one nation".
That's what the accompanying publicity material says, leading the reader to wonder if other dictionaries don't also approach their task from a "global perspective", whatever that might mean. How, for instance, does this volume ("the first newly written dictionary to be published in the UK for 20 years") differ significantly from last year's New Oxford Dictionary of English? Is the Oxford somehow the reflection of a Little Englander mentality, where wogs begin at Calais and any words associated with them are banished on a slow boat to China?
No, the more banal truth is that the people behind Encarta are trying to jump on that fashionable bandwagon where cultural and post-colonial studies meet, pat each other on the back and agree that the outmoded language of imperialism has had its day.
Yet there's something oddly imperial, certainly old-fashioned, about even the look of this book, which is full of those little linedrawings familiar to many of us from the Victorian and Edwardian encyclopaedias of our childhood, showing what a moccasin looks like - not to mention a pumpkin, a squid, a sundial, a tarantula, a tricycle and (this now being the very late 20th century) a computer and a cellphone. There are thousands of such drawings and hundreds of passport-sized photographs of the famous and not-so-famous - people such as Mary McLeod Bethune, Cesar Chavez, Benjamin Harrison, James Monroe, Helen Sharman, Zachary Taylor, Harriet Tubman.
Who are these people? Well, they're mostly American, as befits a dictionary produced in partnership with Microsoft, and indeed the work has an American rather than a global feel to it, not least in its stern-faced puritanism. "Blow job," we're told, is "offensive," and so is the sexual usage of "dick," while in its non-sexual usage (as in "he's a complete dick") it's "highly offensive". In fact, almost every common sexual term is either "offensive" or "highly offensive", causing the reader to protest: just give us the definition, and let us decide how offensive it is.
Apart from that, and ignoring the claims it makes for itself, this dictionary seems a serviceable alternative, or addition, to the Oxford. Indeed, in layout and typography, it's very similar, and is just as user-friendly - a term defined in both dictionaries and in John Ayto's 20th Century Words. And, like the Oxford, it's up-to-date with many of the other terms defined in Ayto's entertaining book. Thus, Encarta and Oxford are both aware of such usages as bad hair day, chill out, cred, eco-friendly, eye candy, fashion victim, foodie, infomercial, infotainment, lunchbox (as in Linford Christie), negative equity, saddo, slaphead, wannabe and zero tolerance.
Encarta misses out, though, on such contemporary terms as Britpop, drop-dead gorgeous, dumbing down, Eurotrash, golden goal, goodfella, road rage and valley girl - all of which can be found in both Ayto and Oxford. And Ayto (who divides his definitions into decades) comes up with some essential phrases not found in either Encarta or Oxford: bobbitt, Bridget Jones, cash for questions, cool Britannia, Dianamania (now obsolete), dirty dancing, dog's bollocks, girl power, loved up, New Labour, power dressing, superpub and trailer trash.
However, astonishingly and unforgivably, none of the three books mentions Homer Simpson's imperishable contribution to our rich and varied global language. Doh!
John Boland is a journalist, poet and critic