Well, it turns out that some people aren't joking in endorsing this suggestion:
Instead of creating a new word to represent someone who is receiving guidance under a mentor as a 'mentee', couldn't someone (not certain of who is responsible for adding/changing definitions to the official dictionaries) simply add an additional definition to the word protege to allow for further meaning?
Recall the context: On the "mentee" thread, some commenters suggested that "protege" was an adequate substitute for "mentee." Others pointed out that "protege" tends to have a different meaning (a protege gets patronage and support, while mentees tend to just get advice). Then came the above quote.
Wow. So here we have a word ("mentee") that has been around for several decades, that is common enough to be listed in several leading dictionaries, and that is easily understandable (especially in context), both because it's not uncommon and because it fits a common pattern of English word formation. Now I'm not saying comprehensibility is enough; "udnerstadnable" is probably understandable, too, but I'm not advising you to use it. But surely comprehensibility is pretty important.
But some people disapprove of "mentee," whether because it's a back formation that doesn't correspond to an actual verb "to ment," or because they just think it's ugly. So instead, the suggestion is to add a definition to the dictionary.
What exactly do people think will happen when this definition is added? Will it, like domain name registry entries, get automatically propagated over the following 48 hours through the minds of English speakers? Will there be public service announcements on TV telling people, "Please remember that starting 2 am Sunday, the word 'protege' will also mean someone who gets merely advice and not patronage or support"?
No: The same people who today hear "protege" and think not just someone who is being mentored, but rather someone who is being politically backed, will keep on thinking this. Perhaps over time, some of them will look up the word in the dictionary, learn the new definition, and slowly spread the definition to listeners (in contexts in which the listeners will recognize the new definition, rather than just being confused). Perhaps, and only over many years. In the meantime, the extra definition in the dictionary will in no way affect what the word actually communicates to listeners. The new meaning will not be properly comprehended.
On top of that, imagine what would happen even if the suggestion worked: We'd take a word that usually has a moderately crisp definition ("a person under the patronage, protection, or care of someone interested in his or her career or welfare"), and add to it another, materially different definition (a person who is simply receiving advice) -- thus making the word ambiguous (or at least more ambiguous). Now sometimes words do acquire new meanings that make them ambiguous, and often there's not much to be done about that. But do we really want to deliberately create extra ambiguity? Is an ambiguous "protege" really better than an unambiguous "protege" plus an unambiguous (even if ugly-sounding to some, or etymologically impure to some) "mentee," to the point that we should deliberately choose making "protege" ambiguous?
Third, and this returns in some measure to the comprehensibility point, authors of dictionary have a certain professional responsibility to readers. They should inform the readers of what a word in fact means when English speakers generally use it. They could, if they want to, inform the readers of what meanings are socially condemned, or even what meanings the dictionary authors think are in some sense "the best." But can it be right for them just to add a meaning that English speakers don't generally use, simply on the theory that English would somehow be a more elegant language if English speakers did use such a meaning?
I think that if we read a dictionary and learned a definition that, it turned out, was just the authors' own pet project rather than an actual current meaning of the word, we'd rightly feel duped. The dictionary would have made us less likely to communicate effectively rather than more.
Finally, I think all this illustrates a broader point about words and dictionaries. Dictionaries are not the language; they are useful snapshots of the language. Prescriptivists might argue that dictionaries should condemn certain aspects of the language. And indeed dictionaries do in some measure mold the language. But no-one, prescriptivist or descriptivist, should assume that the language will change just because a definition is added to the dictionary, and no-one should accept a dictionary that simply invents new definitions that the authors think might be useful. Drawing a new street on a map won't actually change the city. Adding a new definition to the dictionary won't actually change the language.
Related Posts (on one page):
Are you saying that it's ok for popular usage to create new words, but it's not OK for popular usage to shift the meaning of existing words?
Proactive was a form of mental retardation, where what you already knew confused or blocked new knowledge. Preactive was a counterpart to Reactive.
We have too many proactive politicians.
"Biannual" has been so used to mean "twice a year" or "every two years" that it is now essentially meaningless.
That said, I'm not giving up on semi-annual.
Don Meaker: Any pointers to the etymology you give? The OED, for instance, doesn't take this view. Or am I missing the joke?
Fco: Careful with that "now" -- the OED attests biannual for once every two years back to 1750 (at least using the spelling "bienniel"), but biannual for twice a year back to 1877. Other "bi[time]ly" are attested as "every two" back to 1843 and as "twice in a" back to 1854. So the ambiguity has been around for well over a century, and possibly back to the earliest usages of at least some of the "bi-" words.
Dearieme: "Released" isn't quite the way these things work. Perhaps a Universally Obeyed Language Czar, if there were one, could say "pupil will now mean someone who is mentored, and no-one will think at first of children." But this doesn't mean that we ordinary English speakers can simply use "pupil" about 25-year-old professionals whom one is informally advising giving informal advice; if we do use it that way, we're likely to get unwanted connotations -- or, in some instances, total failures of comprehension.
One-on-one instructors in non-career areas have other names, like advisor and counselor and guru.
"the official dictionaries"
English is not like Spanish or French, where there is an official Academy of the language that publishes an official dictionary purporting to describe the correct iteration of the language. This suggestion doesn't even make sense, since there are no official dictionaries (not even the OED).
Or we might notice that we've been reading Dr. Johnson's dictionary. To wit:
Oats: A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland appears to support the people.
You might think so, but that type of quaint fidelity to logic is so Second Millennium. It marks you as someone in, but not truly of the blogosphere. Ideological determinism is the new common sense.
EV's a crazy libertarian and he gets dangerously agitated when self-appointed language police stop a citizen who's using an unregistered linguistic vehicle, particularly when said vehicle was not engendering confusion and more particularly when it was offering some precision not available among its alternatives. I didn't hear him say he OPPOSED the use of "protege", and I didn't hear a position on the natural migration of the meaning of words, SailorDave. I also don't think he likes the idea of deliberately de-precisioning terminology, but hey, I'm not EV, so I could be wrong on that one.
"only a tiny minority of the educated elite refer to in any event."
oops -- really meant that only a tiny minority of the population, consisting almost exclusively of the educated elite, refer to the dictionaries for guidance and support on usage. The vast majority of english speakers use whatever words they know, and pick up new vocabulary from the usage of others.
My point was that dictionaries REFLECT usage, they do not CONTROL it.
Second, what do you mean by "legitimacy," "screw up," and "right word"? If actual usage by actual English speakers -- including, in many instances, actual English speakers who are rather more august and respected than we are -- is not the test of "legitimacy," then what is?
Third, as it happens the OED and other dictionaries won't include occasional misspellings (or else they'd be even thicker than they now are); "pasghetti" isn't going to be there. They'll include a word when they find that it is fairly well-established in actual usage. And if that turns out to be so, for instance when both "judgement" and "judgment" are well-established, or both "ensure" and "insure," what basis is there to say that one is not "legitimate," is "screw[ed] up," or is not "the right word"?
Some law schools do the same with alumni who act as mentors for law students.
Re the artistic mentor/protégé relationship, check out the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative.
EV, just out of curiosity, what would you call a person who has one or more protégés, given that "mentor" is evidently out for you? (I think someone asked this in an earlier thread, but I don't recall its being answered.)
Sounds like Mr. O'Leary was getting more than advice, no?
As an aside, has anyone ever thought about how the word "manure" needs its image rehabilitated. I'm mean, it's the sound "ma" (which is good), with a "newer" after it, which is also good. "Ma" - "newer." Yadda, yadda...
Proteges have mentors
Not all mentors have proteges (some just have mentees).
In fiction, at least, polices officers sometimes have "Rabbis". I wonder what the paralele term for Rabbi is ...
'Stavlennik' STAHF-leen-neek')
The pairing is now "mentor/stavlennik." And it is so because *I called it first*. And I further declare that people who accent the second syllable have screwed up the pronunciation.
Next issue?
"Newer" is good? Not for us Burkeans. But Burke never played much of a role on Seinfeld. I think Drew Carey might have done some episodes on him, but I don't remember all that well.
Sure thing EV. But if you were to receive a note stating that an event occurs biannually, without an added explanation on what the informer "means" by biannual, you are still just as uninformed as you were before you were notified. The broad ambiguity of the word renders it meaningless. The note might as well be blank.
Either this word gets a specific meaning, or remove it from the OED, it's just taking up space.
- I have heard protégé used to describe a person inspired by the "patron," without any formal relationship. This follower successfully perpetuates the "patron's" ideas.
- A law enforcement officer may have a "rabbi." It's an informal relationship falling somewhere along the mentor-advisor-guru-patron continuum.
I guess, in a way, this hinges on whether a person likes words or if they like order and want even language to fit into their self-accepted pattern of usage.
I think we should even start a movement. One word, one definition!
Seems to work just fine for me and I don't see the need for a word like "mentee" OR a new definition for "protege". But, like JR Walker, I don't really mind if someone else does.
So knock yourselves out.
The issue, instead, is that some who object to the word "mentee" offer the word "protege" as a substitute, not--and here is the distinction--because it carries that meaning already but because we ought to force it to carry that meaning. What Eugene objects to is the idea that, if we find a particular word, like "mentee," to be inelegant or ugly, we can simply erase it from the dictionary and apply its meaning to a word we find acceptable. The suggestion Eugene criticizes is not that protege means "the receiver of advice," but that, if it doesn't, well, we ought to make it mean that anyhow.
Eugene is completely right: This is simply not the way language works, and it is Draconian notions of prescriptivism--not "incorrect usage"--that we ought to rail against.
"Rabbis/Rabies"?
Just wanted to share.
But then he turns around and is horrified at the idea that we add the a definition to protege in the dictionary that reflects how it is also, now, being commonly used. I agree that if he agreed protege was being commonly used this way, he would be ok with adding that definition. But by the same token, if the people who are opposed to recogonizing mentee as a word were to agree it is a word, they would of course drop their opposition to it also. The question is why is Eugene so opposed to recognizing this common usage of protege (which is a parallel question to asking why the people who don't like mentee are so opposed to that word)? And, as my original post notes, he seems to have given us the answer. It is not in line with the usage his law firm follows, therefore this 'unlawful' usage of protege must not be recognized. It seems to me this is very much in line with the people who don't like mentee because some authority figure (an old high school English teacher?) told them it is not a word.
My wife is a manager at a pharmaceutical company. Her superior is a terrifically competent woman who has her fantastic advice and guidance over her career at the company.
Should she refer to this woman as her "mentrix" or in PC 2007, is "femtor" a more appropriate term?
I think Eugene has two basic objections: 1.) To the thought that by modifying dictionaries we can change the definitions of words to suit our purpose, and 2.) That even if we could, it would be desirable to muddle up the (supposed) definition of "protege" and do away with "mentee," when both already (supposedly) occupy a narrow band of meaning.
In short, your characterization that "he turns around and is horrified at the idea that we add the a definition to protege in the dictionary that reflects how it is also, now, being commonly use" fails to grasp exactly what the issue is.
Your last post, itself, argues that mentee is the better word since using protege in this regard 'muddies' up its meaning. A good argument, perhaps, but you can't simulteously post arguments about why mentee is the better choice and claim we are not discussing at all what word is the better or more commonly used choice. Why did you feel the need to argue that mentee is the better word if that is completely off the point? Might it be because the tone of Eugene's discussion shows it is not off the point at all?
I wonder what hurdles one would need to go through to be officially allowed to use the term 'vlog'? Are there additional forms required to verb it?
So yes, 'mentor' has an 'advisor' connotation to it. But I can tell you that many churches (including mine) use the term to include a sort of accountability issue as well.
What's wrong with 'mentoree'? It doesn't jar as much as mentee, to be sure.