SPRINGFIELD, MS – Everybody’s stirred, to say the least, about some new entries that are going to be printed in the future release of Webster’s Dictionary. Some words like Sudoku, Bollywood and “ginormous” are raising eyebrows, but the real controversy making its way to the head of debate is the inclusion of the word that’s eluded exact definition for years: gullible.
“We haven’t defined it until now simply because no one could agree on what it meant.” Herschel Dempsey, CEO of Merriam Webster, had to say. “It’s a word with a lot of roots in a lot of languages. It has so many different meanings … somehow [gullible] is a certain arragement of syllables that most dialects seem to favor.”
This new entry isn’t just a big step for finally ending the feud over the exact definition of gullible, but a gigantic step for uniting cultures worldwide.
Boston high school librarian, Maxine Ferrell lauds Merriam Webster, stating “This is brilliant, really. Almost globally we share a common slang term, a word almost singlehandedly shared by all people, finally we won’t just share the word… we can share the context.”
The only controversy that still looms around the hot word “gullible” is the meticulous effort from translators to make sure the word is defined exactly at it is used in each language, and that the roots are well researched so it’s not anchored to one nation’s dialect over another.
On the whole, it will be relieving to many major authorities on languages and international relations to finally agree on a common definition for gullible, which has so far never been defined in printed word.
-Freida Johnson
What, really?
So who is attempting to gull whom?
My 1929 edition Concise OED has an entry gull, n and v.t. Dupe, fool. So gullible, a., gullibility n.