Hopefully, you no longer object to sentences that begin with the modifier hopefully. If you do, forget it; the battle is lost. On the other hand, if you still insist that infer and imply mean two different things, hang tough, despite accusations of being a word prig; this is one the word prigs could win. As for the plural-singular identity crises suffered by words like data and media, stand by; they could go either way.
Such are some of the bulletins to be gleaned from the second edition of the unabridged Random House Dictionary of the English Language. "A storehouse and mirror of the language," is how Editor in Chief Stuart Berg Flexner describes the new dictionary, and with its 315,000 entries, the twelve-pound volume amply lives up to the billing. Along with the publication, between 1972 and 1986, of four fat folios supplementing the Oxford English Dictionary, this is the most important dictionary venture since 1966, when Random House's first edition appeared.
The present volume (destined, according to its own news releases, to be called RHD-II) is not so comprehensive as the dominant publication in the unabridged category, Webster's Third New International Dictionary (1961), which has more than 450,000 entries and is generally more thorough and dense with examples. But RHD-II is an eminently practical, everyday reference: it is typographically crisp, its definitions are clear and brief (sometimes to the point of spareness), and it offers some features that Webster's lacks, including the dates when words entered the language and pronunciation and etymological guides at the foot of its pages. Above all, it is up to date. Placed side by side with its progenitor, RHD-I, it provides the best opportunity in a generation to survey the state of the lingo and to chart its recent changes.
The most prominent change: explosive growth. RHD-II contains 50,000 new entries, most of them words that have come into use since 1966. The field of business and finance has contributed its share (greenmail, golden parachute), as have science and technology (string theory, user friendly), government (disinformation, -gate as an all-purpose suffix for scandals), social trends (yuppie, underclass) and relations between the sexes (significant other, palimony).
Many other additions are the result of old words taking on altered meanings. RHD-II includes 75,000 new definitions reflecting this process. Where a mole . in 1966 was mainly an animal, now it is also, thanks to John le Carre, a spy who burrows into the enemy's bureaucracy. A window is not only something to gaze out but also an interval during which rockets can be launched or any opportunity seized. And in addition to all its other 1966 meanings, like has become an interjection, breaking out like acne all over adolescent speech, as in, "It's, like, ubiquitous."