By Amanda Gillies
A Nelson teacher had to choose her words carefully when a student asked her to explain an entry in the school dictionary.
Lisa Shymkus was teaching her special needs class about spelling but was shocked to discover the Harper Collins dictionary contained two ‘f’ word references.
“I was absolutely appalled and shocked,” says Ms Shymkus
A special needs student brought in a Harper Collins dictionary and asked about some of the text abbreviations at the back - such as STFU, which immodestly ignores the F bit and then pretends RTFM stands for read the "flippin" manual.
Dictionary or not, Ms Shymkus was lost for words.
“They need to get this off, this is not appropriate. Shut up is very aggressive anyway, add the extra bit with F on it and, yeah, that's not what our standards are here,” she says.
Ms Shymkus wrote to HarperCollins in the UK and last night the commissioning and development editor replied, apologising for any offence.
“I must say I completely agree that these abbreviations do not belong in a school dictionary. I do not know how the former editors allowed this to go through. I will make a note of it and ensure they are removed at the next reprint,'' said the editor.
Harper Collins New Zealand told 3 News the dictionaries were imported from the UK and there was no editorial input here. Later in the day a spokeswoman rang back, saying she had looked at all the different editions of similar dictionaries in their warehouse and could not find the offensive page in question, but 3 News found editions at two Nelson book shops.
Dictionary editors cannot normally sneak in made-up or offensive words but from 1934 to 1947 a fake word ‘dord’ - appeared in a Merriam Webster dictionary.
And like these abbreviations, the word was eventually removed.
3 News