Dictionary Society of North America

A troop of baboons

The fact-checking organization Politifact Rhode Island has determined that an aggregate of baboons is not called a "congress," as claimed in a chain e-mail. After consulting dictionary.com, Merriam Webster, and Oxford, which shed no light, and Urban Dictionary, which was apparently updated using the chain e-mail as a source, the reporter sensibly sought the advice of both primate specialists and lexicographers, consulting DSNA President Orin Hargraves. According to the article, the proper term is "troop."  Using the word "congress" casts unfair aspersions on baboons.

Is there a collective noun for dictionary-makers? I propose "a fascicle of lexicographers." The term is both apropos and sufficiently obscure to send folks to their dictionaries.

"Pragmatic" is Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year

In choosing the 2011 Word, the editors were following the electronic footsteps of their readers, who looked up "pragmatic" in increasing numbers during and following Congress's August debate over the debt ceiling. For more details, including comments from DSNA members Peter Sokolowski (Merriam-Webster editor at large) and Allan Metcalf (executive secretary of the American Dialect Society, which picks its WOTY next month), check out the AP wire story.

Musical celebration of eponyms (with caveat)

 Start your Monday morning with this cheerful song: "I hope my name becomes a noun" by Adam Cole and Robert Krulwich (pictured) on NPR's website. Also featured in the video is Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary.

More reflections on outrage at dictionary updates

Linguist and historian Geoffrey Nunberg joins the conversation with an article in the New York Times. Nunberg compares the latest outcries to the rage that greeted Webster's Third New International, which celebrates its fiftieth anniversary this year. If you think folks get excited about OMG and muffin-top, how do you suppose they reacted when Philip Gove gave the OK to "ain't," cited Ethel Merman as a source, and, in the words of Wilson Follett, published a “fighting document” that was “out to destroy . . . every obstinate vestige of linguistic punctilio, every surviving influence that makes for the upholding of standards.” Read the rest of Nunberg's piece here.

Continuing chatter about new words

The Philadelphia Inquirer belatedly climbed aboard the OMG bromance charabanc, with an article on 18 September. I mention their story because reporter John Timpane actually went to the trouble to talk to a couple of members of DSNA, Merriam-Webster's Peter Sokolowski  and Temple University professor Muffy E. A. Siegel. The latter is quoted as saying:

"People have a misconception that dictionaries and grammar books determine what language is [.] But in fact, it's the opposite. We're always changing and getting rid of words and rules people no longer use. Language is a living system that changes to serve the needs of its users."

Read the rest of the story here. (Of course, if you're following Peter on Twitter you probably already know this.)

 

Wrapping up the annual fuss over new words

Lexicography is a very predictable business. Four years as your executive secretary, monitoring the press and the blogs for dictionary news to share, has brought four rounds of local newspapers reporting that civic organizations are donating dictionaries to school children (invariably leading with an enthusiastic endorsement from a precocious nine-year-old).  I've read four years worth of December buzz about the Word of the Year. And with September approaching, it's time for the outbursts of shock and horror as Oxford, Collins, and Merriam Webster, among others, play Heidi Klum and announce "who is in and who is out." 

As I was procrastinating about reporting the uproar over the inclusion of "bromance" and "helicopter parent," or the ashcanning of "charabanc," I saw that the Visual Thesaurus was briskly reporting on the annual fuss, with a piece yesterday by Dennis Baron, on the new 150 words in Merriam-Websters's Collegiate Dictionary. They followed up today with a piece by Baltimore Sun copy editor John E. McIntyre, "who argues that journalists reporting on new words often misconstrue the purpose of dictionaries."

So instead of trying to write my own piece, I'll give you some tidbits of what other folks are saying. Hop on board.

Henry Hitchings at the Telegraph observes that, "Hostility to a new word (candidates from the latest Chambers might include “webisode” and “OMG”) is fraught with unarticulated concerns about class, politics, propriety and taste."

The Oxford WordsBlog claims to have added "goldendoodle" so they could include a cute picture of the aforesaid canine on their blog (it is very cute).

The Eight-Track Museum bans the Oxford Concise English Dictionary, in retaliation for dropping the word "cassette tape"--see the story in the Huffington Post.

And Erin McKean in an interview with ABC News reminds us that Wordnik never deletes any words.

More DSNA Montreal coverage

Ben Zimmer passed along links to two broadcasts  taped in conjunction with our meeting in Montreal:

a recording of an interview with Corinne Kirschner  entitled "The Future of the Dictionary," which appeared on the CBC website, and

the podcast of an interview with Ben Zimmer for the 8 June CBC show "Q" with Jian Ghomeshi (Ben's part starts at about 52 minutes in and runs to the end).



And here are the URLs  to two pieces written by Ben, using the 50th anniversary of Webster's Third New International Dictionary as a hook: one from the Boston Globe and one from the Visual Thesaurus.

Sorry not to have posted these items sooner--I was on vacation, inventing a new cocktail.

 

Happy Birthday Webster's Third: have some cake

As I mentioned in my last, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of Webster's Third on Wednesday evening at our meeting in Montreal, and DSNA member Christopher Devine has obliged with a handsome photo of the cake pre-slicing--I arrived too late (for photos, I hasten to add, not for eating):

 

Christopher also sent along a shot of the conference program/poster, which Lise Winer brilliantly designed from a word-cloud taken from the Index to Sidney Landau's Dictionaries:

 
As well as a clever faux-title page for his own instructive talk on "The first English dictionary: Robert Cawdrey and the myth of creation":

Many thanks to Christopher, and I encourage everyone else to contribute photos to illustrate further reports.

Chocolate chips and food for thought in Montreal

We're having a terrific time here in Montreal at the 2011 DSNA meeting, thanks to Lise Winer and her organizational team.  We started with two papers on French dictionaries for Quebec and the Carribbean, followed by a reception celebrating the 50th anniversary of Webster's Third International, hosted by Peter Sokolowski of Merriam Webster. If anyone took a photo of the cake before the ravenous horde descended, send it along so I can post it! Here's a snap of our VINTAGE party favor:

The next morning Ron Butters gave a paper on "‘Chocolate chip’ and the silent subreption of the lexicon" that sent everyone hungrily out into the coffee break, where Lise mercifully had arranged for chocolate chip cookies.

Here's the gang, on the steps of the Redpath Museum at McGill University (thanks to Linda Hancher for stepping in as photographer):

 

and here's a photo of one of the fascinating dictionaries in the exhibit that the Rare Books Collection staff at McGill put together (along with a jolly reception on Thursday night):

 

And here, for what's it's worth, is a photo I included in my own presentation, "Secular Bibles: Annotations in Early American Dictionaries." The dictionary is in the Cordell Collection.

 

 If you took any photos you'd like to share, or if you're posting them on your own blog, do let me know.

A Minor Exception: On W.C. Minor and Noah Webster

Joshua Kendall's article in The Nation discusses Dr. W. C. Minor's early and problematic work as a definer for the 1864 edition of Webster's Dictionary, two decades before the mental collapse which led to his incarceration and, ultimately, to his famous contributions to the Oxford English Dictionary. Minor's involvement with Webster also is discussed by DSNA member Michael C. Hancher in his article "Illustrating Webster," just published in Dictionaries (31) 2010.