[A. G. Maisey]

I feel like I'm playing ping-pong here David, I have one bat in my right hand, one bat in my left, and as soon as I've returned a ball to Gustav, I need to return one to you.

Firstly, I do not use online dictionaries. The professional writing that I need to do often finishes up being used in a legal context, so I use hard copy, published dictionaries, I've got about two meters of bookshelves given over to dictionaries in several different languages, I need these as tools of trade, it can be pretty embarrassing to have a lawyer read out something that one has written, and then have that destroyed by some smart-ass barrister -- not one who makes coffee, but one who keeps people out of jail.

It is not open to each of us to independently determine what form or style of the English Language qualifies as "Standard English".

In another lifetime I taught English to new comers to Australia, I did this as a community service, it was not paying work, however, it did require a qualification to be permitted to undertake the work. One of my teachers who helped me to gain this qualification was a linguist who taught me and his other students, that the best example of "Standard English" was the form of English spoken by educated people living in a certain part of England, I think that part of England might have a location somewhere about 16 miles south west on London.

Well, he might have been right, or he might have been wrong, but what I have learnt about "Standard English", as that term is understood by linguists at the present time, is that "Standard English" can no longer be restricted to a single ironclad idea, thus "Standard English" can now be defined in a rather loose way that involves the application of varying measures in order to determine what is, or is not Standard English, in other words, Standard English is no longer something that is inflexible, but rather something that can flex providing that it adheres to a standard of intelligibility.

So I assume the idea of "Standard English" now means that as long as an educated person can understand the message of the spoken or written word that message has complied with a standard.

Thus, the standard with which Standard English must comply is a standard of intelligibility, and this standard cannot be not one of individual interpretation.

In respect of the version of the Oxford English Dictionary that I prefer to use for general writing. I use this because I was advised by a couple of lawyers that for courtroom usage this particular edition was perhaps the most practical. The complete Oxford runs to something like twenty odd volumes and is constantly being revised, for general usage it is not really practical to use, but the edition I use is apparently well suited for use in defensible legal argument. Moreover, it is only two volumes, and is always within arms length, so even though I began using it maybe 40 or 50 years ago, I now habitually use it whenever I have to look at a dictionary.

As to your semantics comment, yes, I do agree that I sometimes tend to consider exactly what a word means. I'm sorry, this is the way I was taught to think, it is the way I do think, if I write something I do want to be able to defend what I write. If I'm talking to somebody, I'm not as particular, particularly in a social setting, that is because when using the spoken word for communication we usually do have the opportunity to correct a misunderstanding, when we write we do not have that opportunity, thus when I write something I want that writing to say just what I want it to say.

Thus, if I want to refer to a person who is operating in a military capacity I might use the word "soldier", but if I wish to refer to a person who follows the occupation of war, I might use the word "warrior". These are different words with different meanings, and I have worked too long in an environment where use of the wrong word can get you hung.

True David, I did not address everything you wrote, but did I need to? Why recap on things that need no comment?

I agree with you completely in that all this discussion about warriors has derailed this thread. This sort of discussion, or if you wish debate, is something like the sort of discussion that undergraduates have in order to try to elevate themselves in the intellectual hierarchy.

All I really wanted to do was to cause people to think about why I wanted to disconnect Balinese keris from Balinese warriors, and the answer to that is pretty simple, it was because the keris was not, is not a weapon of war.

All the rest of this garble is just so much piss in the wind. (fifty years ago this would not have been accepted as Standard English, but by the current standard, I think it might be)