How
are dictionaries crafted and maintained over the years? Just which words should be included? How are these words carefully defined?
Those
questions are answered in a dynamic discussion about language, linguists and
culture in a book that promises to “make you appreciate the wonderful
complexities and eccentricities of the English language.” I’m talking about the lexicographer’s
confessional, Word by Word, penned by Kory Stamper, a Merriam-Webster wordsmith
who also blogs regularly on language at www.ivorystamper.com
She
has provocative chapters on things like bad words (bitch), wrong words
(irregardless), and the pronunciation gaffes of words misspoken (nuclear). She also covers grammar definitions, and the
authoritative powers and obligations of a dictionary. She engages in a lively debate about the very
words we give currency to. Without the
building blocks to sentences and communication, where would we be?
She
notes that “lexicography is an intermingling of science and art,” and really
summarizes well the challenge today for all keepers of dictionaries: “English is a language that invites invention
(whether you like it or not) and the glories of the Internet make it possible
to spread that invention abroad. That means we tend to see
new collages everywhere we go.”
The
debate for dictionaries comes down to this – by what standard shall it be
decided if a word should be included in the dictionary? Does the dictionary reflect cultural usage or
does it seek to create and initiate such usage?
Once a word makes it in, should it be reviewed periodically to see if
the meaning needs to be tweaked or if the word’s still worthy of
inclusion? How is it figured out as to
how to define a word?
In
Kory’s insightful book on the secret life of dictionaries she pours her
thoughts, feelings, and experiences out and flavors her story-telling with a
peppered voice on all things words. You
can see she delights in all of this as she both defends explains what she does, while she also questions and ponders the sometimes unmet challenges of lexicographers.
Below
are excerpts from her book:
Definition
Crafting
“We
read the definitions given there with little thought about how they actually
make it onto the page. Yet every part of
a dictionary definition is crafted by a person sitting in an office, their eyes
squeezed shut as they consider how best to describe, concisely and accurately,
that weather meaning of the word “cat.”
These people expend enormous amounts of mental energy, day in and day
out, to find just the right words to describe “ineffable,” wringing every word
out of their sodden brains in the hopes that the perfect words will drip to the
desk. They must ignore the puddle of
useless words accumulating around their feet and seeping into their shoes.”
Oldest
Dictionary Maker
“Merriam-Webster
is the oldest dictionary maker in America, dating unofficially back to 1806 with
the publication of Noah Webster’s first dictionary, A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language, and officially
back to 1844, when the Merriam brothers bought the rights to Webster’s
dictionary after his death. The company
has been around longer than Ford Motors, Betty Crocker, NASCAR, and
thirty-three of the fifty American states.
It’s more American than football (a British invention) and apple pie
(ditto). According to the lore, the
flagship product of the company. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, is one of the best-selling
books in American history and may be second in sales only to the Bible."
The
Life of Lexicographers
“Lexicographers
spend a lifetime swimming through the English language in a way that no one
else does; the very nature of lexicography demands it. English is a beautiful, bewildering language,
and the deeper you dive into it, the more effort it takes to come up to the
surface for air. To be a lexicographer,
you must be able to sit with a word and all its many, complex uses and whittle
those down into a two-line definition that is both broad enough to encompass
the vast majority of the word’s written use and narrow enough that it actually
communicates something specific about this word – that “teeny” and “measly,”
for instance, don’t refer to the same kind of smallness. You must set aside your own linguistic and
lexical prejudices about what makes a word worthy, beautiful, or right, to tell
the truth about language. Each word must be given equal treatment, even when
you think the word that has come under your consideration is a foul turd that
should be flushed from English.
Lexicographers set themselves apart from the world in a weird sort of
monastic way and devote themselves wholly to the language.”
Grammar
“A
lexicographer’s view of grammar begins with the parts of speech, eight tidy
categories we shunt words into based on their function within a sentence. If you survived the American educational
system, you can probably rattle off at least four parts of speech – noun, verb
adjective, adverb – and here the nerds among us chime in with the
remainder: conjunction, interjection,
pronoun, and preposition. Most people
think of the parts of speech as discrete categories, drawers with their own
identifying labels, and when you peek inside, there’s the English language,
neatly folded like a retiree’s socks:
Person, Place, Thing (Noun); Describes Action (Verb); Modifies Nouns
(Adjective); Answers the W Questions (Adverb); Joins Words Together
(Conjunction); Things We Say When We Are Happy, Surprised, or Pissed Off
(Interjection).”
The
River of Language
“Think
of English as a river. It looks like one
cohesive ribbon of water, but any potamologist will tell you that rivers are
actually made up of many different currents – sometimes hundreds of them. The interesting thing about rivers is, alter
one of those currents and you alter the whole river, from its ecosystem to its
course. Each of the currents in the
river English is a different kind of English:
business jargon, specialized vocabulary used in the construction
industry, academic English, youth slang, youth slang from 1950, and so on. Each of these currents is doing its own
thing, and each is an integral part of English.”
The
Changing Dictionary
“This
is the general approach that lexicography takes for another sixty years or
so: dictionaries are lists of hard words
for educated, well-read people, and the words worth defining sprang generally
from the mind of the lexicographer and the drudgery of others who had gone before. These early dictionaries focused sometimes on
foreign words that we had kidnapped into English and sometimes on multisyllabic
words we had churned out. What they did
not include were simple, ordinary words, because those were already common
enough that no scholar needed to know them.
Early dictionaries were entirely didactic: they were meant to improve the education of
those who already had some education.
“That
began to change in the mid-seventeenth century.”
The
Early Dictionary
“First
was Nathaniel Bailey, whose 1721 An
[sic] Universal Etymological English
Dictionary not only included everyday words but also gave extensive
histories, notes on various uses, and stress marks so people would know where
to put the emphasis on a word they might have only read. It was aimed at everybody – students, tradesmen, foreigners, the “curious,” and the
“ignorant” – and accordingly included a good number of taboo and slang words,
including “cunt” and “fuck.” (both coyly defined in Latin, not English). Bailey’s dictionaries were wildly popular.
After
Bailey came Samuel Johnson.”
Then
Came Johnson
“Johnson’s
system became the basis upon which nearly every dictionary from 1755 forward
was prepared. Noah Webster used heavily
annotated copies of books (and many, many other dictionaries) in preparing his
1828 American Dictionary of the English Language; every managing editor at what
would be called the Oxford English Dictionary oversaw a public reading program
to gather quotations and rare words from an international cadre of readers
(including at least one murderous nutbar);
dictionary companies today still underline, bracket, and extract
quotations, which we call “citations,” from a wide variety of sources.”
New
Words Everywhere
“English
is a language that invites invention (whether you like it or not), and the
glories of the Internet make it possible to spread that invention abroad
(whether you like it or not). That means
that we tend to see new coinages everywhere we go.”
Taboo
Language
“Dictionaries
mark taboo language in a variety of ways.
Most common are labels at the beginning of the definition to warn
you: “offensive,” “vulgar,” “obscene,”
“disparaging,” and the like.
Unfortunately, these labels can be opaque at best. What’s the difference, for instance, between
“vulgar” and “obscene,” or “offensive” and “disparaging”? Don’t offensive words disparage? If something’s obscene, isn’t it also vulgar,
and vice versa?”
Today’s
Lexicographer
“Modern
lexicographers are trained to be objective and leave their own linguistic
baggage at the door; modern lexicography is set up to make the definer
anonymous and incorporeal. But language is deeply personal, even for the
lexicographer: it’s the way that we
describe who we are, what the world around us is, delineate what we think is
good from what we think is bad.”
The
Etymology of Words
“Most
words come into being first in speech, then in private writing, and then in
public, published writing, which means that if the date given at the entry
marks the birth of a word, the moment when it went from nothing to something,
then Merriam-Webster must have an underground vault full of clandestine
recordings of each word’s first uttering, like something out of the Harry
Potter books, only less magical. But the
fact remains: because of how words are born, we will probably never know who
coined a particular word and when they first used it, because language begins
as something private and then moves into the public sphere.”
How
We Use Dictionaries
“Though
this book has been a nitty-gritty, down-and-dirty, worm’s-eye view of
lexicography, one cannot ignore that dictionary making and reference publishing
are commercial enterprises. American
dictionaries, in particular, are a slave to the dollar: they are not magnanimously sponsored by
academic institutions, as many people believe.
Most of the innovations in American dictionaries have been driven by a
desire to gain market share and outcompete other publishers, and it’s been that
way since Noah Webster. The difference
between then and now is in how people consume and use dictionaries.”
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Brian Feinblum’s insightful views, provocative opinions, and
interesting ideas expressed in this terrific blog are his alone and not that of
his employer or anyone else. You can – and should -- follow him on Twitter
@theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels much more
important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by
BookMarketingBuzzBlog © 2018. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in
Westchester. His writings are often featured in The Writer and
IBPA’s Independent. This was named one of the best book
marketing blogs by Book Baby http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs and
recognized by Feedspot in 2018 as one of the top book marketing blogs.
