I used the same dictionaries, just 29 years apart, to refute your stated position , that your 1984 dictionary ( a different edition completely from both of my Websters! )had changed, due to the "sexual revolution" of the mid '60s! My dictionaries give exactly the same definition, at the same place, though one was published prior to the "sexual revolution" and the other, published decades after.
The only divergence, in my dictionaries, is word swap "boy" for "youth". Now, YOUTH comes from the youngster, which, in the late 1500s, denoted a young man of no experience of any kind, including but not solely, sexual.
Samuel Johnson did NOT include the word virgin in the first edition of his dictionary; which was published in 1755. I own the set. You don't and there's no way that you've even seen one of them, let alone peruse either of the two gigantic volumes, which comprise the full dictionary. Not every known word found its way into these volumes.
You want to nit pick? Okay, sweetums, I show you up, yet again! I happen to have a rather good vocabulary and unlike you, know and use words with skill and alacrity; though I have forced myself to dumb down my written English here, because of people like yourself, who know little of their mother tongue. so read the following and weep!
peruse...1) to read through, as with thoroughness or care. 2) to read. 3) Archaic..... to survey or examine in detail.[ late Med. ]
Ergo, there was less than nothing incorrect with my use of the word; however, a very great deal WRONG, with your claim, that I had missed used the word.
But keep on posting, you're proving, beyond a shadow of a doubt, to every person who reads this thread, just how little you know and what and who you really are; which isn't much! ;^)
That is not the only divergence.
I posted to you a much more significant divergence, which you ignore--
Or perhaps you missed seeing it during "a quick perusal" of my post.
Samuel Johnson did NOT include the word virgin in the first edition of his dictionary; which was published in 1755. I own the set
Most odd, since Samuel Johnson used the word in his other writings often enough:
"The virgin who too soon aspires to celebrity and conquest perishes by childish vanity, ignorant credulity, or guiltless indiscretion." -Samuel Johnson
"But her indignation cannot be thought violent when we consider her not only as a virgin" -Samuel Johnson
"the corrupter of virgin innocence" -Samuel Johnson
"a fine in old times due to the Laird at the marriage of a virgin" -Samuel Johnson
"an orphan virgin robbed of her little portion by a treacherous lover" -Samuel Johnson
And so on.
I suggest you again do a "a quick perusal" of your Johnson dictionary--but a little less quickly this time.
Odd that he would leave out a word he used so often.
Ergo, there was less than nothing incorrect with my use of the word [peruse]
Odd you would say you did a "quick perusal."
How does one "quickly" read thoroughly?
USAGE NOTE Peruse has long meant “to read thoroughly” and is often used loosely when one could use the word read instead. Sometimes people use it to mean “to glance over, skim,” as in I only had a moment to peruse the manual quickly, but this usage is widely considered an error. Sixty-six percent of the Usage Panel finds it unacceptable.