From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary or
OSPD is a dictionary developed for use in the game
Scrabble, by speakers of
United States English.
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Contents
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1
History
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1.1
Creation
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1.2
Offensive words
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2
See also
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3
References
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History
Creation
The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary was first
published in 1987[1]
through the efforts of the
National Scrabble Association (NSA) Dictionary Committee and
Merriam-Webster. The OSPD was developed as the word
authority for NSA-sanctioned clubs and tournaments. Selchow and
Righter, the owners of Scrabble at the time, proposed that words
contained in at least one of the following five dictionaries
should be in the OSPD: Merriam-Webster's Collegiate
Dictionary, Eighth Edition (1973), Funk & Wagnalls
Dictionary of the English Language (1973),
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
(1969),
Webster's New World Dictionary, Second College Edition
(1970), and The Random House College Dictionary (1968).[2]
The compilation was done by hand and many
errata and omissions were later discovered. For example, the
word granola was present in all five nominated
dictionaries but not in the OSPD. A second edition, OSPD 2, was
released in 1991. The current edition is OSPD 4.
Although OSPD bears the name Official Scrabble Players
Dictionary no countries list their "official" dictionary as
the OSPD, whereas the
Official Club and Tournament Word List is the official word
source of tournament Scrabble in the
United States,
Canada,
Thailand and
Israel.[3]
The NSA markets the OSPD as ideal for school and family use.
Offensive words
While reading OSPD 2, Judith Grad found several "offensive"
words.[4]
Although she wrote to
Merriam-Webster they did not agree to remove the words from
the dictionary. Grad wrote to the
National Council of Jewish Women, who supported her cause.
After receiving player threats to boycott events,
NSA president
John D. Williams agreed to license a third edition of the
OSPD with the "offensive" words removed. It is not clear who
decided which words were offensive, or by which criteria words
were deemed offensive.
See also
References
- ^
National Scrabble Association Dictionary Committee & Its
Word Sources
- ^
National Scrabble Association Dictionary Committee & Its
Word Sources
- ^
The Israeli Scrabble Association
- ^
Fatsis, Stefan. (2001).
Word Freak Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.
Categories:
Dictionaries |
Scrabble