I clearly have too much free time, too, as the following will attest:
 
I think (hope) what Tucker meant to say is that "album" and "LP"
are not synonymous -- and they're not, no matter how many DJ's
on the radio say things like, "This old song hasn't been reissued
on CD yet, so we're just going to play it off the album".  An
album IS just a collection of songs.  An LP is an album pressed
onto a 12-inch vinyl phonograph record.
 
I, too, have an American Heritage Dictionary in my office, and it
even goes so far as to define "album" as: "one or more 12-inch
long-playing records in a slip case".  However, this dictionary
was published in 1969, and at that time, there was only one format
available for an album-length recording: the 12-inch vinyl LP.  So,
at that time, they WERE synonymous, in a sense.  Since 1982 or so,
this is no longer the case.  The definition of "album" has to be
narrowed to "a lengthy musical recording" or "a collection of songs";
if it's on 12-inch vinyl, you further classify it as an "LP"; if
it's on 5-inch laminated aluminum, it's a "CD".  An album can
be issued in several different formats; but it's the same album for all
of that.  If you see a brand-new American Heritage Dictionary on the
bookstore shelf that retains the above definition, I would skip it
and buy a Webster's or a Random House.
 
By the way, "record" is one of those words that has become so widely
used as to lose any real meaning.  What does it mean to have Grammy
award categories for "Best Album", "Best Song" and "Best Record"?
What qualifies as a "record" but not as an "album" or "song"?  I think
you have to look at the context where it's used.  If I say I just
bought "the new Connells record," you probably guess that I mean a CD,
since WFAD was not issued as an LP (that I know of).
 
There -- now that I've used up some free time, I can get back to work.
 
--Steve
 
On Sep 9, 10:55am, ZEITGEIST wrote:
> Subject: Album/record - a study in too much free time
>
> On Fri, 6 Sep 1996, Tucker Cawley wrote:
>
> >
> > I hate to be horribly nit-picky, but this is one of my pet peeves...  an
> > album is just a collection of songs.  Album and record are not synonyms.
> >
> The American Heritage Dictionary in my office contains the following
> definition of 'album'
>
> "One or more phonograph records in one binding"
>
> and the following for 'record'
>
> "A disk structurally coded to reproduce sound; phonograph record"
>
> and 'synonym'
>
> "A word that has a meaning identical or very similar to that of another
> word in the same language"
>
> While not identical, they are very similar definitions.
>
> Using the above definitions, one could interpret that they are, indeed,
> synonyms and that my usage was correct.
>
> Regards,
>
> Brett