Pablo Massa replies to me:

>>As for believing what is written in dictionaries...in all seriousness
>>I recognize not only that errors are present (in one of my seminars we
>>were given several pages of the Harvard Dictionary to review, looking for
>>errors).
>
>Come on, I was joking...:-)

I know, but I was trying to make an observation, namely that even with
those things that are historically documented, not to mention those that
can be quantified "easily," dictionaries don't agree.

However, I am not suggesting that because it is difficult, one should not
try to provide definition.

Karl