The folks responsible for updating Webster’s dictionary are in some hot McWater with the folks at McDonald’s over their inclusion of a popular slang word for a dead-end job in their latest dictionary. The June update of the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary added some 10,000 new definitions including “McJob,” defined as “low paying and dead-end work.”
Yahoo! News - McDonald’s Decries Webster Over ‘McJob’
In an open letter to Merriam-Webster, McDonald’s CEO Jim Cantalupo said the term is “an inaccurate description of restaurant employment” and “a slap in the face to the 12 million men and women” who work in the restaurant industry.
I’m reminded of the Disney company’s ongoing attempts to stop people from using the phrase “a Mickey Mouse operation.” The thing is Webster’s didn’t introduce the phrase McJobs or its definition, but is merely recognizing the popular usage of such. Whether Webster’s lists it in its dictionary or not, however, isn’t likely to change the way people use the term.
UPDATE: The folks at Webster’s tell McDonald’s to McShove it.
But the dictionary publisher said Tuesday that it “stands by the accuracy and appropriateness” of its definition.
“For more that 17 years ‘McJob’ has been used as we are defining it in a broad range of publications,” the company said, citing everything from The New York Times and Rolling Stone to newspapers in South Africa and Australia.
I’m lovin’ it!
Google are in the same position over the verb ‘to Google’, on the account that ‘Google’ is a trademark.
Sometimes, having a word like that featured in a dictionary is seen as a compliment - in the UK we have a TV chef called Delia Smith (our answer to Martha Stewart), and the term ‘to do a Delia’ is now in the Oxford English Dictionary. She was apparently flattered by it.