Museum for the defining

Dave McGuire ????????: It was once in fashion to call certain websites "virtual museums". Not mentioned in the American Heritage Dictionary's definition, but certainly part of the commonly accepted definition, if not description of a museum is that it is generally open to the public. For museums which are private and closed to the public, the term "private collection" tended to be used. By the broadest definition so far discussed, any collection of anything could be referred to as a musuem, including Jay Leno's car collection, various coin and stamp collections, pop-top tab collections, and even someone's collection of used kleenex, and it need not be open to the public. But these times they are a-changin', and so are languages, not the least of which is English. By the time a dictionary is printed it's obsolete. Even the OED, which is the most up-to-date (and exhaustively thorough) dictionary, is unable to keep itself abreast of current word usage: It's always at least months or even a year behind. Since it has become possible to publicly display and share a private collection via a "virtual museum" website, and there is a tendency to simplify language, it is not surprising that the word "virtual" is being dropped and only "museum" used. So the argument about what constitutes a museum is, or will shortly be, moot. No? == jd The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence. -- H. L. Mencken --