Helen FieldsScience Writer

According to this wire story, an Australian physicist was the first person to notice a mistake in many dictionary definitions of a siphon. In case you’re wondering: when you’re using a siphon, it’s gravity that moves liquid from one place to another, not atmospheric pressure. The story says he found the mistake in the Oxford English Dictionary, and has yet to find a dictionary that gets it right.

I checked the row of dictionaries next to me and got – well, mostly words for “siphon” in different languages (Siphon; hevert; siphon; サイフォン) and a tip on usage (siphon, not syphon). My main English dictionary didn’t mention the kind of pressure. But my second-choice English dictionary and my medical dictionary both said the liquid is moved by atmospheric pressure. How about that? The guy was right.

I don’t think of a dictionary as a place where you’d find science errors, but of course that thing is full of science, from aardvark to zymogen. Looking for mistakes in the OED could be a whole new hobby for scientists.