#lexicographers

An interesting article about a very extensive Latin dictionary in the New York Times. Excerpt: 

When German researchers began working on a new Latin dictionary in the 1890s, they thought they might finish in 15 or 20 years.

In the 125 years since, the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (T.L.L.) has seen the fall of an empire, two world wars and the division and reunification of Germany. In the meantime, they are up to the letter R.

This is not for lack of effort. Most dictionaries focus on the most prominent or recent meaning of a word; this one aims to show every single way anyone ever used it, from the earliest Latin inscriptions in the sixth century B.C. to around A.D. 600. The dictionary’s founder, Eduard Wölfflin, who died in 1908, described entries in the T.L.L. not as definitions, but “biographies” of words.

The first entry, for the letter A, was published in 1900. The T.L.L. is expected to reach its final word — “zythum,” an Egyptian beer — by 2050. A scholarly project of painstaking exactness and glacial speed, it has so far produced 18 volumes of huge pages with tiny text, the collective work of nearly 400 scholars, many of them long since dead. The letters Q and N were set aside, because they begin too many difficult words, so researchers will have to go back and work on those, too.

A linguistics book for the rest of us

For several years now I’ve been looking for a book about linguistics that doesn’t assume I know diddly squat about the subject. I tried Lakoff and Johnson’s Metaphors We Live By. I tried Pinker’s The Language Instinct. In desperation I got a copy of the Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics. Not one of them was what I wanted or needed.

I ordered a copy of Steve Kleinedler’s Is English Changing?because…

A delightful oral history of Words of the Year from Kory Stamper. Excerpt: 

It’s an odd thing to be part of a national end-of-year phenomenon, but I was, for almost a decade: I was one of the editors involved in choosing and publicizing Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year. For a lexicographer who spent most of her time wrestling with the vagaries of how to define “blue plate special,” helping to pick the WOTY — everyone pronounces it “woady” — was an adventure filled with booby-traps and pitfalls.

On the one hand, choose something that makes a big, bold statement about the year in review, one that says the dictionary has its finger on the pulse of the people. On the other hand, choose something that isn’t too negative or too political or too naive or too arch. [...]

We needed the professional word nerds — the ones affiliated with academic institutions and dictionary companies — who, against the odds, managed to turn WOTY announcements into annual news events. Herewith, an oral history of the Word of the Year, told in the words of the people who know it best.

Fiat Lex is a new podcast about dictionaries by people who write them, featuring Steve Kleinedler and‏ Kory Stamper (whose book and blog I’ve talked about several times). From the description of the first episode: 

In our first episode, we: 

blow your minds by telling you that "the dictionary" doesn't exist;

talk about how new words get into dictionaries (not by petition, so STOP ASKING) and how that's not as straightforward a process as you would think;

explain how lexicographers find new words, which sometimes involves beer and diapers; 

touch on how words get taken out of dictionaries, and how that's not as straightforward a process as you would think, either. Assuming you think about such things. (Who are we kidding here?)

BONUS FEATURES! Kory spells a word aloud correctly, which will probs never happen again; Steve channels Chumley the Walrus and then goes right into fancy linguist talk about velars and coronals; Tennessee represents! 

The new online Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction probes the speculative corners of the lexicographic universe.

“Warp speed” may be a term of the moment, thanks to the federal coronavirus vaccine program. But it’s also one with a history — which goes back farther than “Star Trek,” to a forgotten 1952 science fiction story in the pulp magazine Imagination.

Ditto for “transporter,” “moon base” and “deep space,” to name just a few of the more than 400 words whose origins are getting pushed back earlier than their previously first appearance, thanks to the Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction, a new free online resource released on Tuesday.

A historical dictionary devoted to the history of something as future-oriented (and imaginary) as science fiction may seem like a contradiction in terms. But then science fiction has always had a curious relationship to the real world, said Jesse Sheidlower, its editor.

“Despite the fact a lot of people look down on science fiction as a genre, it’s everywhere,” he said. “And there is a very interesting crossover between science fiction and science.”

The dictionary is the latest in a series of eclectic projects for Sheidlower, a former editor at large at the Oxford English Dictionary who first came to prominence in the 1990s, as part of a new generation of lexicographers injecting the field with a fresh nerd-cool factor.