by Kory Stamper
“Everything in etymology is conjecture”: Liberman, “Occam’s Razor and Etymology,” DSNA-20 & SHEL-9.
“He had the notion”: Quoted in Micklethwait, Noah Webster and the American Dictionary, 170.
“The cavalryman, far more than the infantryman”: Vivian, British Army from Within, 86.
“Sir,—In the Oxford New English Dictionary”: T. D. Atkinson, letter to the editor, Times Literary Supplement, Oct. 17, 1935, 625.
The account also mentions: Pierre-Jean Grosley, Londres (1770), 1:626.
“to use decimation”: White, Words and Their Uses, 106.
“How often does one really”: Shea, Bad English, 16.
“twou’d be as Criminal”: Defoe, Essay upon Projects, 237.
“not arrived to such a Degree”: Swift, Proposal, 15.
“passel of double-domes”: editorial, The New York Times, October 12, 1961, 21.
“badly needs new guidance”: Springfield Union, Feb. 19, 1962, quoted in Morton, Story of “Webster’s Third,” 223.
“an affront”: John G. Rodgers, New York Herald-Tribune, Feb. 20, 1962, quoted in Morton, Story of “Webster’s Third,” 224.
“take the Third out of print!”: “Dictionaries: The Most Unique,” Newsweek, March 12, 1962, 105, quoted in Morton, Story of “Webster’s Third,” 224.
The authority upon which: Morton, Story of “Webster’s Third,” 229; “The Panelists,” American Heritage Dictionary (blog), accessed April 24, 2016, https://ahdictionary.com/word/usagepanel.html.
The December 1964 ballot: American Heritage Dictionary Usage Panel, “Letter A” in-house balloting summary, American Heritage Dictionary/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt archives, Dec. 1964.
“There is always the danger”: Cowley, Asimov, and Tuchman, quoted in Steinway, “Archivist Mines the Usage Ballots.”
in the early years of the twenty-first century: American Heritage Dictionary, 5th ed., s.v. “dilemma,” usage note.
Interestingly enough, only 90 percent: Ibid., s.v. “irregardless,” usage note.
Eighty-one percent of them: Ibid., s.v. “decimate,” usage note.
AMERICAN DREAM: On Dates
Tacitus did mention brothels: Tacitus, Annales 15.37.
“These Safari are neither starved”: Burton, The Lake Regions of Central Equatorial Africa (1859), 410, quoted in Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd ed., s.v. “safari.”
“kind of a quick slap”: Britt Peterson, “ ‘Car Talk’ Lives On—in the Dictionary,” Boston Globe, April 26, 2015.
“Well, the first thing I’d do”: Tom Magliozzi and Ray Magliozzi, “When the Oil Light Comes On, Stop the Engine Immediately,” Car Talk (blog), March 1, 1992.
“The arrangements for shopping”: Smith, Essays on Questions, 55.
“Every republic”: Nation, Nov. 8, 1900, 362.
The linguist Arnold Zwicky: Arnold Zwicky, “Why Are We So Illuded?” (abstract for conference paper, Stanford University, 2006).
John Gower used “hap”: Gower, Confessio Amantis, 43.
Or that “OMG” goes back to 1917: John Arbuthnot Fisher to Churchill, Sept. 7, 1917, in Memories and Records by Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher (New York: George H. Doran, 1920), 87.
NUCLEAR: On Pronunciation
“A Besides this generall note”: Mulcaster, Elementarie, 111.
“Pronunciation…is an apte orderinge”: Wilson, quoted in Johnson, Dictionary of the English Language.
“established the jargon”: Johnson, preface to ibid.
One book’s pronunciation: see Buchanan, Linguae Britannicae; Kenrick, New Dictionary of the English Language; and Sheridan, Complete Dictionary of the English Language.
“spectacular blunder”: Robert Burchfield, quoted in Elster, Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations, 347.
“aberration”: Richard Lederer, quoted in ibid., 349.
“beastly”: Right there in the title, Elster, Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations.
“Though disapproved of by many”: Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, s.v. “nuclear,” usage note.
a Nobel Prize–winning theoretical physicist: The physicist in question is Julian Schwinger: “Schwinger also had some speech mannerisms, which many of the students began unconsciously to imitate. I don’t know how many of the Ph.D.s he had produced—there was [sic] sixty-eight by the time he left Harvard, an incredible number for a theorist, since each Ph.D. represents at least one publishable research idea—began to say ‘nucular’ and ‘We can effectively regard,’ two of the Schwinger standards.” Jeremy Bernstein, “Personal History,” New Yorker, Jan. 26, 1987.
“I wish you would”: Quoted in transcripts from Charles Gibson, “Kennedy Letters: Insight into History,” ABC World News transcripts, Sept. 28, 2006.
“I once asked a weapons specialist”: Geoffrey Nunberg, “Going Nucular,” Fresh Air, NPR, Oct. 2, 2002.
Metcalf notes: Metcalf, Presidential Voices, 108.
Steven Pinker, another linguist: Steven Pinker, “Pinker Contra Nunberg re Nuclear/Nucular,” Language Log, Oct. 17, 2008.
But then we’d have to account: Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd ed., s.v. “thermonukes” and “nuclear.”
“But which of these stories explains”: Nunberg, “Going Nucular.”
NUDE: On Correspondence
In 2015, BuzzFeed: “Black Women Try ‘Nude’ Fashion,” BuzzFeed, May 20, 2015.
I clicked one lipstick image: Ashley Reese, “12 Nude Lipsticks That Are Actually Nude on Darker Skin,” Gurl.com, June 5, 2014.
MARRIAGE: On Authority and the Dictionary
I clicked the link: “Merriam-Webster’s Word’s Worth,” The Colbert Report, Comedy Central, April 2, 2009.
by 2003, when the Eleventh Collegiate was released: Brigham Young University, Corpus of Contemporary American English, s.v. “marriage.”
Oxford English Dictionary: Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd ed., s.v. “marriage” (Dec. 2000).
The American Heritage Dictionary: American Heritage Dictionary, 4th ed., s.v. “marriage,” (2000, 2009). The definition has been revised several times since 2009.
Dictionary.com had also: Dictionary.com, s.v. “marriage” (2009). The definition has since been revised.
“One of the nation’s most prominent”: Bob Unruh, “Webster’s Dictionary Redefines ‘Marriage,’ ” WorldNetDaily, March 17, 2009.
“We often hear”: Ibid.
“In 2003 Turner said”: Max Blumenthal, “Hannity’s Soul-Mate of Hate,” Nation, June 3, 2005.
“fucken [sic] gay”: “Webster’s Dictionary Re-defines ‘Marriage’ to Include Same-Sex Perversion,” alt.conspiracy, March 18, 2009.
“commenced with civilization”: Webster, preface to American Dictionary of the English Language.
“[Worcester] has since published”: Quoted in Micklethwait, Noah Webster and the American Dictionary, 225.
“The work contains”: Advertisement, Evening Post, Oct. 20, 1847, 2.
“Get the best!”: Advertisements with exclamation point ran in the North Carolina Argus, June 19, 1849, 3; and Lewisburg (Pa.) Chronicle, Nov. 28, 1849, 4. There were other ads that ran in various papers in 1849 that merely stated, “Get the best.”
“Wait, and get the best”: Advertisement in Times-Picayune, Feb. 13, 1857, 5.
“Get the best. Get the handsomest”: Advertisement in Pittston (Pa.) Gazette, June 14, 1860, 3.
“A man who would know everything”: Advertisement in Lewisburg (Pa.) Chronicle, March 14, 1856, 2.
“The last twenty-five years”: Advertisement for Webster’s New International Dictionary, Second Edition, in-house archive, Merriam-Webster.
“Hold the English language”: Advertisement for Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, in-house archive, Merriam-Webster.
“It is the closest we can get”: Mario Pei, “ ‘Ain’t’ Is In, ‘Ravolis’ Ain’t,” New York Times, Oct. 22, 1961, BR6.
“a scandal and a disaster”: Wilson Follett, “Sabotage in
Springfield,” Atlantic Monthly, Jan. 1962, 74.
“big, expensive, and ugly”: Garry Wills, “Madness in Their Method,” National Review, Feb. 13, 1962, 98.
“a trend toward permissiveness”: Dwight Macdonald, “The String Untuned,” New Yorker, March 10, 1962, 166.
“It is undoubtedly the longest political pamphlet”: Barzun, “Scholar Cornered,” 176.
“There was far more to the controversy”: Mario Pei, “A Loss for Words,” Saturday Review, Nov. 14, 1964, 82.
“He doesn’t like your politics”: Quoted in Skinner, Story of Ain’t, 296.
“Why does Dr. Porter ignore”: “Falsifying Partisanship of Webster’s Dictionary,” McArthur Democratic Enquirer, April 3, 1872, 1.
“The majority of voters in states”: Daly, comment on “Webster redefines marriage.”
“During our twenty-five year period”: Brudney and Baum, Oasis or Mirage, 3–4.
“JUSTICE SCALIA”: Oral arguments, Taniguchi v. Kan Pacific Saipan Ltd., 18–25.
They appear in Chief Justice Roberts’s dissent: Roberts, dissent in Obergefell v. Hodges, 1–29.
“The image of dictionary usage”: Brudney and Baum, Oasis or Mirage, 6.
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