In the 1750's Samuel Johnson began work on an official, scholarly dictionary of the English language, which he planned to finish in three years. His friend Dr. Adams noted that it took the French Academy's forty members over forty years to accomplish the same feat for the French language, to which Johnson replied, "Let me see; forty times forty is sixteen hundred. As three to sixteen hundred, so is the proportion of an Englishman to a Frenchman."

Though no longer used as a fundamental source for the English language, Johnson's dictionary marked the first foray into creating an official chronicle of English. The modern age has certain advantages over the plume and parchment tactics of bygone centuries, expanding the scope and speed of such an endeavor. The modern unabridged dictionary lists over 315,000 terms and definitions, and online outlets afford major dictionary publishers greater updating flexibility. But in the mad dash to feed the great leviathan of language with heaping spoonfuls of vernacular, our authoritative sources for language occasionally yield to the scant efficacy of mainstream understanding. Hence the following:

- The definition at dictionary.com is taken from the American Heritage dictionary:

an·i·me n. A style of animation developed in Japan, characterized by stylized colorful art, futuristic settings, violence, and sex. [Japanese, short for 'animeshon,' from English animation.]

- According to sources at Oxford (and for anyone with access to the Oxford English Dictionary online version) the OED also includes "sex and violence" as characteristic traits of anime.

- The word 'anime' appears in neither the Merriam-Webster/Franklin dictionary nor its online edition. But Webster defines 'animated cartoon' as 1: a motion picture made from a series of drawings simulating motion by means of slight progressive changes in the drawings. (hardly germane to the issue I suppose)

- My crazy uncle Fred defined anime as "communist."