NPR has been running a series on “some of the language that’s become part of our everyday vocabulary since September 11, terms such as war on terror and Islamic Fascism.” The first item was on “the various meanings of the word jihad.” So this is a whole story on language, and in particular on one word, “jihad.”
One sentence, though, struck me:
Ten years ago, few people in America had heard the word jihad. It’s so common now it has its own entry in the Oxford English Dictionary.
It turns out, though, that the word “jihad” appears even in the First Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary; the volume containing the word “jihad” was published in 1901. What’s more, the First Edition gives both the literal meaning, “A religious war of Muslims against unbelievers in Islam, inculcated as a duty by the Koran and traditions,” with attestations from 1869, 1875, and 1880, and a figurative meaning, “A war or crusade for or against some doctrine, opinion, or principle; war to the death,” with attestations from 1880 and 1886.
Now mistakes happen, and this one isn’t terribly material to the story’s broader points. I strongly suspect that the term jihad has indeed become more common over the last decade.
But the mistake reminded me in mind of a claim that I read in Far from the Madding Gerund, the wonderful collection of Language Log blog posts: Media stories routinely make elementary mistakes about language matters, mistakes that could easily have been remedied with just a quick dictionary check. (Here’s one post in which the Language Loggers make this point, though they’ve also provided many other examples.) Of course media mistakes happen in lots of other contexts, and the Language Log people find them especially often as to linguistics for obvious reasons. But it is striking that the errors are routinely made even when adequate checking is so straightforward.