Dictionary Society of North America

Tergiversate

Now, I have to hand it to Dictionary.com, tergiversate is a great word. When I was in third form, I compiled a list of new and cool words as I encountered them in my reading, and I still remember that one of them was tergiversate. (Two others were haruspex and trireme. I must have been reading ancient history.)

Dictionary.com has chosen tergiversate as word of the year, eschewing neologisms and, as Jay Schwartz, Dictionary.com's Head of Content told The Huffington Post: "We think that it's immensely rewarding to find existing words that capture a precise experience, and this year, tumult has been the norm rather than the exception."

Oh--what does it mean? Flip-flop, equivocate, turn your back. Tergiversate, o man, foreswear thy foolish ways!

Samuel Johnson in Context

Cambridge University Press has just published Samuel Johnson in Context, a collection of 47 short essays about the great lexicographer and his world. The book, which is aimed at a college and general audience, is edited by DSNA member Jack Lynch (also author of The Lexicographer's Dilemma: The Evolution of English from Shakespeare to South Park [2009]). Lynda Mugglestone contributes an article on "Dictionaries" and yours truly (Lisa Berglund) the introductory chapter on "Life." Visit the Cambridge UP website for a complete table of contents.

Justice Department Seeks Ebonics Experts

This story is subheaded "Bizarre" on The Smoking Gun website. Here are a couple of excerpts:

The Department of Justice is seeking to hire linguists fluent in Ebonics to help monitor, translate, and transcribe the secretly recorded conversations of subjects of narcotics investigations, according to federal records...

In contract documents, ... Ebonics is listed among 114 languages for which prospective contractors must be able to provide linguists. The languages are divided between “common languages” and “exotic languages.” Ebonics is listed as a “common language” spoken solely in the United States.

You can read the whole story here.

DSNA Newsletter - Volume 35(2), Fall 2011 - Available Online Now

The latest issue of the DSNA Newsletter (Volume 35, Number 2 -Fall 2011) can be viewed here: Download 35-2

As if Walmart opening at midnight weren't bad enough...

...now Oxford is announcing the Word of the Year when we still have five weeks of 2011 words to experience! Here's what the Independent has to say about "squeezed middle":

Speaking about [Ed] Miliband's term for those seen as bearing the brunt of government tax burdens while having the least with which to relieve it, Susie Dent, spokesperson for Oxford Dictionaries and language expert on Channel 4's Countdown, said: "The speed with which squeezed middle has taken root, and the likelihood of its endurance while anxieties deepen, made it a good candidate for Word of the Year."

The runners-up include Arab Spring, Hacktivism, Occupy, Phone Hacking and Sodcasting.

Alas, I don't have the self-control of the American Dialect Society, which soberly refrains from choosing its Word until January... so here goes. Writing from the perspective of Western New York State, my Word of the Year is "fracking."

CFP: International Society of Dialectology & Geolinguistics, Vienna 2012

The 7th Congress of the International Society of Dialectology and Geolinguistics will be held in Vienna (Austria) from 23-28 July, under the auspices of the Institute for Lexicography of Austrian Dialects and Names (DINAMLEX) at the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

In the course of this international event, there will be two parts entitled dialect 2.0 and wboe100. Both emphasize on dialectology and variety linguistics, geolinguistics , dialect dictionaries, lexicography and atlases in the age of cyberscience in interdisciplinary and international context.
In addition the wboe100 focuses on 100 years of research in dialect lexicography in Austria in an international context, due to the centenary of the DINAMLEX in 2012.

The deadline for submissions of abstracts is 30 November 2011. For further information about the conference, visit the Congress website.

"[We] [the court] are not lexicographers"

I am an ignoramus about patent law, but nevertheless I found this blog post, "Federal Circuit Continues to Avoid En Banc Review of Claim Construction," quite interesting. The post analyzes a federal court's decision not to review claim construction policy; what caught my eye originally was a dissenting judge's arguments about "plain and ordinary meaning" and the (non)-lexicographical role of the court (as quoted above). You can read the rest of Kevin E. Noonan's Patent Docs blog here.

Conference on Language, Literature and Linguistics, in Singapore

A call for papers has been distributed by the International Conference on Language, Literature and Linguistics, to be held in Singapore 9-10 July 2012. For information on proposal requirements, keynote speakers, awards and other conference details, please visit the conference website.