Oxford needs to look up the word "slang."

[Burly Brute]

Don't split an artery now!

To the best of my knowledge there are only two languages in the world which have a supervising body: French, and Hebrew. The latter because it wasn't used except as a ceremonial and scriptural language, and when modern Israel was formed they needed new new words for things that had not existted the last time the language had been used, such things as a "fork" a "traffic light" and ... "Scotch whiskey" (yayin saruf - Scotch that is burning). In the case of French something that speakers of other languages don't understand is that culturally the language has a whole different and greater importance to the French than it does to the rest of us, with the potential exception of Arabic which is considered holy in the use of its religious adherents.

That being the case, an important event in around 1992 was that the Academie Francaise published the complete dictionary of the French Language in four volumes. Coincidentally and instructively, Oxford published its Complete English Dictionary... in forty volumes.

English is both a quicker evolving language than others, Oxford also sees its mandate differently: access to all users of English. When, during the second war, a new electronic component was developed that was part transmitter, part resistor, it was quickly dubbed a "transistor." Other languages didn't move as fast. The German word for transistor is "transistor" and in Japanese, I'm told it is "tlansistol". Think about how the word "streak' morphed in and out of meaning from smudge to naked runner, back to smudge.

For its flexibility, I am grateful to English, but finally, to agree with you, I am distressed by those who abuse it.

Old English Teacher
French Speaker
German Dabbler
Hebrew Student
Latin Student

Father Bill

And Koine, right? ;-)