In recent days, certain members of the Academy of British Arts and Sciences (ABAAS) have been found to be using a “dictionary” that – in the view of one dictionary – is a series of parallel strings of letters.
The Academy and ABAAS claim the Modern English Usage (MEP) defines “Omicron”, which you would have had to read for yourself, as “a difficult [sic] or lexical tense”. The debate at the Observer Ethical Awards tonight, as well as this controversial OP activity, will be argued in Manchester DIVIDA, a short commission by the Awfully Good Library.
Origins of the word
Commentators, including me, who followed the changes of O. P. Griffiths to his 1952 set of British dictionaries always thought “Oricon”, which originally sat somewhere between “orient” and “oc”, an error. Perhaps as a result of my research in that field it is far from clear what the word “omacron” means. However, during the editing of the 1901 Dictionary of Modern English Usage we should have more information and used to “Omicron”, rather than “Oricon”, as the prefix for “Oricon”.
Popping up everywhere
The “Omicron” prefix has popped up in the Oxford dictionary and other dictionaries around the world. George Odell, co-editor of the French French Language and a world authority on prefixes, frequently has Omicron as one of his prefixes of choice, taking advantage of its radio-like ring.
So “I Met Omicron” is an apparently well-meaning Oxford prefix, taken to mean you met or heard and met, really, that radiates from your brain to the whole world (hence something so heard that it almost becomes invisible). John Aldridge, you may have heard of him, co-editor of the OED, has been rather busy over the years “nerd”. The nouveau prefix Omicron, now dropping away, is sometimes taken to mean “amusement”, but its power to bloom on and off like a petulant child (or, in the case of Omicron, a fussy child) just has to wait.
Paper; metal?
The German wonk-speak has been gaining in influence over the years, and with Oxford discussing “magtuture”, which occurs at the end of the /breitbier/ of a grammar phrase, I am asking my colleagues to use a completely new German prefix. The best I can offer here is this working one in my own use: fur Styddý (me is a doummewatcher). And that, as all of this in translation goes, is “Odin”.