Roget's All New Politically Correct Dictionary and the Death of the Googlewhack

BREITBART.COM - Just The News

An online thesaurus struck a listing Monday for the word 'Arab' after Arab-American groups complained the entry listed derogatory synonyms.

The entry, which appeared on thesaurus.com, listed the word as a noun meaning 'beggar,' and gave 16 pejorative synonyms including 'homeless person' and 'welfare bum.'

Odd because the same site contains this

jew
tr.v. Offensive jewed, jew·ing, jews

1. To bargain shrewdly or unfairly with. Often used with down.
2. To haggle so as to reduce (a price). Often used with down.

[From Jews' supposedly extortionate practices as moneylenders in the Middle Ages.]

Personally I don't mind the definition standing - its offensive to use the word in this context, but if it is so used, then its the role of a dictionary and thesaurus to document it. Pity the poor ESL reader flipping through a Sherlock Holmes story and having the mystery compounded by the term 'street arab'.

I guess dictionary.com is going down the tube - since google.com stopped linking to it, its popularity has been going down the tube. Most discourteous of google ; it killed the game of googlewhacking, which relied on the authenticity of words being comfirmed by a an underlined link to dictionary.com. Now, do a search for say "Henry Kissinger" and the google bar is linked to Kissinger which, even by internet standards, is not a word.