Certain members of the British establishment have a beef with the editors of the OED. Sir Digby Jones (not to be confused with Digby the Beneficent) and David Frost (not to be confused with the guy who asked Nixon all those softball questions) are upset because the current edition includes the word “McJob”:
LONDON (AFP) – Business chiefs and lawmakers criticised the use of the term McJob Thursday as fast food chain McDonald’s launched a campaign to get an influential dictionary to change its definition.
[. . .]
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED), seen as the definitive guide to the English language, describes a McJob as “an unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects, esp. one created by the expansion of the service sector.”
But Jones, Frost and 13 others said in a letter to the Financial Times that the dictionary should change this “to reflect a job that is stimulating, rewarding and offers genuine opportunities for career progression.”
Their letter coincided with a push by McDonald’s to get the OED to change the definition — it is launching Thursday a public petition in British restaurants and on the Internet.
The OED isn’t an arbiter of definitions, it’s a chronicler of word usage. If you read an OED entry you will see the entire etymological history of the word, all its usages and definitions, in chronological order. For example, if you want to know the multiple implications meant by Shakespeare when he uses a particular word in one of his sonnets, you turn to the OED to see how Elizabethans used it at that time.
The idea that the OED should change a definition to suit the whims of a corporation (and a thoroughly loathsome one at that) is nothing short of historical revisionism. You know, kind of like these guys. I’m a bit shocked that members of the British gentry would side with such a crass, uncouth (read: American) company.
I’m not shocked, however, that McDonald’s would pull such a stunt. This is, after all, the same company that threatened Clan Donald with a lawsuit over the ancient family’s use of its own name (they had opened a high-end eatery named McDonald’s Restaurant), so this kind of hubris is par for the course. In the case of Clan Donald, well, they fought back (via Lexis/Nexis):
NEWS that the chief of the clan MacDonald, Lord Godfrey Macdonald, is to challenge the claim by McDonald’s that it “owns” the prefix Mc, follows hard on the heels of threats by one Ronald McDonald, who is threatening to sue the world’s biggest fast food chain on behalf of all Scots. The retired teacher from Aberdeen alleges its use of his name for its clown mascot amounts to an insult to the Scottish clan system and says he is determined to make a stand.
[. . .]
Central to the issue is a threat of legal action made by McDonald’s against a sandwich shop in Buckinghamshire. The Scottish proprietor, not unnaturally, had assumed that adding a light-hearted Mc to the name Munchies would amuse customers rather than incur the wrath of a global empire with 18,700 branches worldwide. She was wrong. Despite the fact Mary Blair’s shop doesn’t even sell burgers or chips, McDonald’s insisted that the name McMunchies infringed its copyright and could confuse the public. It demanded she remove it within 14 days. She can take some consolation, however scant, that she is not the only victim; among the other targets of McDonald’s legal firepower (the McLibel Two notwithstanding) is a restaurant in Vilnius, Lithuania, whose owners had the audacity to call it McSmile. “They’re making themselves look ridiculous,” says Blair, who originally comes from Hamilton. “I have no idea why McDonald’s is picking on me. It never even occurred to me when I chose the name for my shop.
For it to say I’m trying to trade off its name is nonsense. How on earth can it say it owns ‘Mc’, when half the Scottish and Irish nations are called ‘Mc’? I can’t imagine how it even heard about me, the nearest McDonald’s is four miles away.”
Apparently, this dispute was settled out of court, which is too bad; Mcdonald’s, through its own stupidity, was made to look ridiculous.
In fact, they keep engaging in such self-destructive behavior. Remember the McLibel suit?:
The McLibel Trial is the infamous British court case between McDonald’s and a former postman & a gardener from London (Helen Steel and Dave Morris). It ran for two and a half years and became the longest ever English trial. The defendants were denied legal aid and their right to a jury, so the whole trial was heard by a single Judge, Mr Justice Bell. He delivered his verdict in June 1997.
The verdict was devastating for McDonald’s. The judge ruled that they ‘exploit children’ with their advertising, produce ‘misleading’ advertising, are ‘culpably responsible’ for cruelty to animals, are ‘antipathetic’ to unionisation and pay their workers low wages. But Helen and Dave failed to prove all the points and so the Judge ruled that they HAD libelled McDonald’s and should pay 60,000 pounds damages. They refused and McDonald’s knew better than to pursue it. In March 1999 the Court of Appeal made further rulings that it was fair comment to say that McDonald’s employees worldwide “do badly in terms of pay and conditions”, and true that “if one eats enough McDonald’s food, one’s diet may well become high in fat etc., with the very real risk of heart disease.”
McDonald’s may have won the McLibel skirmish, but they eventually lost the war.
The good news is that the likelihood of the OED changing this entry, to suit the interests of this arrogant, multi-national corporation, is virtually nil.
Still, it boggles my mind that McDonald’s would try.
