by Kory Stamper
Madeline nods. “The expectation is that it’s going to be right on the money.”
Drudges learn to find the good even in complaints. “Even that kind of correspondence is really a genuflection to the entity that is the dictionary,” says Emily, and she is right. “The concept of a dictionary—the dictionary as an object—will be useful for a long time.” The business of lexicography is in flux, but the work of lexicography is unbowed. Merriam-Webster’s staff is small, and we’re all sore and still tasting blood, but like all other lexicographers huddled in our hobbit holes, we’re moving forward.
Over dinner with Madeline*2 and me, Steve tells me about how he ended up at Merriam-Webster. He’s the type of guy who seems as permanent a Merriam-Webster fixture as the high-gloss conference room tables or the citation files, but the first time he applied for a job at Merriam-Webster, he didn’t get it. Another editor was hired, and he went back to looking through newspaper want ads for work. Six months later, an editor left, and Merriam called Steve back and hired him.
“I wasn’t working at the time. It was Halloween Day, and I was sitting at home, watching As the World Turns in the afternoon, just me and the dog. The phone rang, and I answered it: it was Fred Mish, offering me the job. The salary was nothing; it was laughable. But I knew this was the biggest thing that had ever happened to me, getting the job. I felt that my life had just changed. It was an amazing moment. I told him I’d take the job, and I walked down to the wharf, sat there, and looked at the ocean, just feeling like my life was about to begin. It was the damnedest thing.”
Business considerations aside, it is the damnedest thing to spend your career in the company of this gorgeous, lascivious language. We don’t do the work for the money or prestige; we do it because English deserves careful attention and care. After a time, he sums up the cri de coeur of every harmless drudge who has ever spent a solitary Thursday hunched over their desk, sifting the grist of “but” or “surfboard” or “bitch” or “marriage” through their fingertips. “That’s what I do,” he says simply. “This is my own little contribution to the world.” English bounds onward, and we drudges will continue our chase after it, a little ragged for the rough terrain, perhaps, but ever tracking, eyes wide with quiet and reverence.
* * *
*1 My shameful confession: it was a Webster’s New World Dictionary, and I loved it. I still love it.
*2 Steve and Madeline married a few years after Madeline began at Merriam-Webster. Their desks were near each other’s, and they used to bounce definitions off each other. They are just one of a few editorial couples at Merriam-Webster. Like calls unto like, deep unto deep.
Acknowledgments (in alphabetical order)
agent ˈā-jənt n -s : a person who acts as a representative for someone (such as an artist, writer, or athlete) and encourages, protects, advises, or kicks the ass of their client
col·league ˈkä-(ˌ)lēg n -s : an associate in a profession; specifically : any of several people who share work experience, knowledge, a preference for silence, and sometimes chocolate
ed·i·tor ˈe-də-tər n -s : a person who prepares something (such as books or other printed materials) for publication; especially : one who reads, alters, adapts, and corrects a written work a great number of times while simultaneously convincing the writer that the written work is good, though not yet good
fam·i·ly ˈfam-lē n -lies 1 a : a group of people sharing common ancestors
friend ˈfrend n -s : one who favors or promotes something (such as the writing of a book) especially by providing emotional, physical, spiritual, or gastronomic support
men·tor ˈmen-ˌtȯr, -tər n -s : a trusted counselor or guide; especially : a person with greater experience and wisdom who teaches and guides a younger or inexperienced person no matter how irritating that inexperienced person may be —see FRIEND
re·treat ri-ˈtrēt n -s : a place of privacy away from one’s normal surroundings; especially : a place of quiet for a particular purpose (such as writing a book or eating one’s host out of house and home)
won·der ˈwən-dər n -s 1 : a cause of astonishment or admiration : MARVEL 2 : MIRACLE
Notes
All entries cited in the footnotes come from either Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition (2014) or Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary (2015).
HRAFNKELL: On Falling in Love
“Hē is his brōðor”: Cassidy and Ringler, Bright’s Old English Grammar, 24.
It’s more American than football: See “For to Make Tartys in Applis,” in The Forme of Cury, a Roll of Ancient English Cookery, Compiled, About A.D. 1390, by the Master-Cooks of King Richard II, Presented Afterwards to Queen Elizabeth, by Edward Lord Stafford, and Now in the Possession of Gustavus Brander, Esq….(London: J. Nichols, 1770), 119, for a delightful apple tart recipe, and Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd ed., s.v. “football” (2015), which makes it plain the game originated in Warwickshire.
“When P* is less than P”: Fitch, Dictionary of Banking Terms, 449.
“I knew that the work”: Johnson, Plan of a Dictionary, 1.
“It is the fate of those who toil”: Johnson, preface to Dictionary of the English Language.
BUT: On Grammar
“gradience”: Quirk et al., Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, 90.
In the West, they were first hinted at: Plato, Cratylus 392a–399b.
“a sound without meaning”: Aristotle, Poetics 1456b.
The parts of speech we use today: Thrax, Grammar of Dionysius Thrax.
This system has been futzed with: For more information, see ibid.; Priscian, Institutitones grammaticae (ca. 500); and Redinger, Comeniana grammatica.
“4.2 Article. There are three:”: Merriam-Webster, “Quirky Little Grammar,” 7.
“I have been sympathetic”: White to J. G. Case, Dec. 17, 1958, quoted in Elledge, E. B. White, 331.
IT’S: On “Gram
mar”
That meant that while Medieval Latin: The Latin is taken from Latham et al., Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources; the Old French from Kelham, Dictionary of the Norman or Old French Language, 74–75; and the Middle English from Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd ed., s.v. “right, adj” (2010).
“English now had to serve the functions”: Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Webster’s Concise Dictionary of English Usage, xiii.
“our naturall tong is rude”: Skelton, Boke of Phyllyp Sparowe.
In 1586, William Bullokar: See Bullokar, Bref Grammar for English, and Cawdrey, Table Alphabeticall.
“to encourage Polite Learning”: Defoe, Essay upon Projects, 233.
“By such a society I daresay”: Ibid., 233–34.
“I cannot allow any pleasures”: Defoe, Complete English Tradesman, 118–19.
“It is with reason expected”: Lowth, Short Introduction to English Grammar, vii.
“The confusion of the possessive ‘its’ ”: Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves, 44.
“I proudly consider myself a punctuation martyr”: “Nataliya’s Reviews: Eats, Shoots and Leaves,” Goodreads.com, June 11, 2014, accessed April 23, 2016, http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/177243634?book_show_action=true.
“In summary of the proof”: Gwynne, Gwynne’s Grammar, 6.
At one point in time, “it” was its own possessive: Both the King James Bible and King Lear cited in Merriam-Webster, Concise Dictionary of English Usage, 442–44.
“I cast my eyes”: Dryden, Defense of the Epilogue, 217.
Later editions of his work: Lynch, Lexicographer’s Dilemma, 30–31.
“really extreme usage fanatic”: Wallace, “Tense Present,” 41.
he used “nauseated” instead of “nauseous”: Wallace, “Broom of the System,” 29, as well as Wallace, “English 183A,” 633.
Bryan Garner, one of Wallace’s prescriptivist heroes: Garner, Garner’s Modern American Usage, 560–61.
“The moment hung there”: Wallace, “Compliance Branch,” 19.
“the deplorable Ignorance”: Swift to Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq., in Works, 268.
E. B. White says in The Elements of Style: Strunk and White, Elements of Style, 35; and White, “Some Remarks on Humor,” 174.
“eloquently speaks to the value”: Joanne Wilkinson, review of Eats, Shoots & Leaves, by Lynne Truss, Booklist, June 1, 2004.
“If the changes that we fear”: Johnson, preface to Dictionary of the English Language.
IRREGARDLESS: On Wrong Words
“I remembered the magnitude of his problems”: Walker, “Old Artist,” 39.
“The language of the people”: “The Seer’s Latest Warning,” Albany Evening Herald, April 5, 1911, 2.
“If the Board sees proper”: “Another Gripe,” Weekly Kansas Chief (Troy, Kans.), Feb. 2, 1888, 2.
“Parson Twine has a new word”: Atchison Daily Globe, Jan. 30, 1882, 4.
“The REPORTER has been given a copy”: “A Star Specimen,” Logansport (Ind.) Reporter, March 24, 1893, 2.
even in the oral arguments: Obergefell v. Hodges. The counsel who used “irregardless” in oral arguments got his undergraduate degree from DePauw University, which is in Indiana, where we have lots of evidence of the use of “irregardless.”
This particular construction: Fruehwald and Myler, “I’m Done My Homework.”
“When another linguist and I”: Marguerite Rigoglioso, “Stanford Linguist Says Prejudice Toward African American Dialect Can Result in Unfair Rulings,” Stanford Report, Dec. 2, 2014.
CORPUS: On Collecting the Bones
The letter’s a marvel: “Nowe if the word, which thou art desirous to finde, begin with (a) then looke in the beginning of this Table, but if with (v) looke towards the end” and following quotation both from Cawdrey, Table Alphabeticall.
“a man of bizarre appearance”: Lynch, Lexicographer’s Dilemma, 74.
“the business of a lexicographer”: Webster to John Pickering, in Morton, Story of “Webster’s Third,” 205.
“Mansplain” stuttered into existence: Zimmer and Carson, “Among the New Words,” 200–203.
This trend has been much more common in the U.K.: “Bored by, of, or with?,” Oxford Dictionaries (blog), April 24, 2016, www.oxforddictionaries.com.
“trying to chisel in on the beer racket”: Merriam-Webster Unabridged, s.v. “chisel, verb.”
And now we see the word “muggle”: “The Supreme Court’s reading and defense of Obamacare meant to him that ‘words no longer have meaning’ and he decried his fellow justices for their ‘interpretive jiggery-pokery.’ That last insult was an unusual one, and it led the muggles of the Internet to wonder where they’d heard it before.” Marina Koren, “Antonin Scalia and the Supreme Court of Jiggery-Pokery,” National Journal, June 25, 2015.
He has made—by hand: Andrew McMillan, “One Man’s Quest to Rid Wikipedia of Exactly One Grammatical Mistake,” Backchannel, Feb. 3, 2015, www.backchannel.com.
“We can actually measure”: Manuel Ebert, quoted in Natasha Singer, “Scouring the Web to Make New Words ‘Lookupable,’ ” New York Times, Oct. 3, 2015.
In November, just five months: “On fleek,” Google Trends, 2014.
My colleague Emily interviewed Monroee: Emily Brewster, “Raising an Eyebrow on ‘Fleek’: PART TWO,” Merriam-Webster Unabridged (blog), Feb. 12, 2015.
“At the Barbra Streisand $5000-a-head Demo fund-raiser”: Herb Caen, San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 12, 1986, 43.
SURFBOARD: On Defining
“L ong O vercoming V alues E ffect ~ love ?”: Comments on the entry for “love,” Merriam-Webster.com.
“hella”: Nancy Friedman, tweet, “Hella t-shirt!,” Oct. 23, 2015.
In fact, it appears to have been coined: Chris Cole, “The Biggest Hoax,” Word Ways (1989), accessed April 24, 2016, http://www.wordways.com/biggest.htm.
“It was concluded”: Stoliker and Lafreniere, “Influence of Perceived Stress,” 148.
“This memo is concerned primarily”: Gove, “Punctuation and Typography of Vocabulary Entries,” 390.
“Wherfore incontinent I caused the printes to cesse”: Elyot, dedication in The Dictionary of Syr Thomas Eliot Knyght.
There’s an awful lot of chatter: “The demand for Hobie’s surfboards grew faster than they could even get balsa wood, so Alter started developing and mass producing foam and fiberglass surfboards. That changed everything.” Nathan Rott, “Hobie Alter, the Henry Ford of Surfboards, Dies at 80,” All Things Considered, NPR, March 31, 2014.
PRAGMATIC: On Examples
“Aren’t politicians supposed”: Joe Klein, “In the Arena,” Time, June 2, 2011, 23.
huge tracts of land: King of Swamp Castle (on his son’s imminent marriage to Princess Lucky): We live in a bloody swamp. We need all the land we can get.
Prince Herbert: But I don’t like her.
King of Swamp Castle: Don’t like her? What’s wrong with her? She’s beautiful, she’s rich, she’s got huge…tracts of land. (Monty Python and the Holy Grail, directed by Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam, 1975)
TAKE: On Small Words
“With the Angels dispatched”: Tom Verducci, “They’re At It Again,” Sports Illustrated, Oct. 18, 2004, 51.
“Whether or not”: Starr, excerpt, Starr Report.
BITCH: On Bad Words
Taboo language of all sorts: Florio, Worlde of Words, 137.
“þou bycche blak as kole”: Castle of Perseverance, 2117, a1450, in Middle English Dictionary, s.v. “bicche.”
By the time Shakespeare: “A blind bitch’s puppies, fifteen i’ the litter.” Shakespeare, Merry Wives of Windsor, 3.5.10.
He was an English Baptist minister: Ash, New and Complete Dictionary of the English Language.
“those Burlesque Phrases, Quaint Allusions”: Grose, Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, iii.
“There were 8 or 9 of them”: Trial of Thomas Wright, April 1726, Old Bailey Proceedi
ngs Online, Ref. No. t17260420-67.
“Be God, he ys a schrewd byche”: The Friar and the Boy, 54, a1475, in Middle English Dictionary, s.v. “bicche.”
Henry Fielding uses it: All attestations in this paragraph are given in Green’s Dictionary of Slang Online, s.v. “bitch, n.1.”
“A woman should be proud”: Joreen [Jo Freeman], The BITCH Manifesto (1968), 1970.
“I think queer harkens back”: Kichi, in Susan Donaldson James, “Gay Man Says Millennial Term ‘Queer’ Is Like the ‘N’ Word,” ABC News, Nov. 12, 2013.
“As feminism taught us long ago”: Kleinman, Ezzell, and Frost, “Reclaiming Critical Analysis,” 61.
“In the specific applications the term”: John Bethel, in-house pink, Merriam-Webster, May 29, 1947.
Susan Brady, one of our associate editors: Susan Brady, in-house pink, Merriam-Webster, May 1, 1992.
“an actress recently described”: Wayne Warga, “Lee Grant,” Cosmopolitan, Dec. 1977, 72.
“It contains his two most”: Edmund Wilson, “Books,” New Yorker, Sept. 18, 1971, 134.
“…was a hard bitch”: Peter Evans, “Bernadette Devlin,” Cosmopolitan, Nov. 1972, 207.
“ ‘So someone calls you a bitch’ ”: Meg Cox, “Female Rappers Sing of Smut and Spice and Nothing Nice—They Make It in Men’s World by Being Rude and Nasty,” Wall Street Journal, April 11, 1991, A9.
POSH: On Etymology and Linguistic Originalism
“We read, in the Scriptures”: Webster, introduction to American Dictionary of the English Language.