Dictionary Society of North America

"Nobody in their right minds starts at A": John Simpson retires

DSNA member John Simpson is retiring after 20 years as the chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Oxford University Press has announced his retirement from his post effective October 2013. John joined the OED editorial staff in 1976, and became co-editor with Edmund Weiner in 1985. He was appointed chief editor in 1993, the seventh OED editor since Sir James Murray’s appointment in 1879. Under John’s editorship, over 60,000 new words and meanings have been added to the OED.

For more than 35 years John has contributed to one of the world's largest and longest-running scholarly projects during a time of great change. During the 1980s the entire OED text, comprising the First Edition (1884-1928) and its Supplement (1972-86), was digitized as an integrated single text. This work laid the foundations for the publication of the twenty-volume Second Edition in 1989 and the launch of OED Online in 2000.

Effective 1 November 2013, Michael Proffitt, the current editorial project director, will serve as chief editor of OED, responsible for leading decision-making on style, policy, and strategy.  Philip Durkin, currently principal etymologist, will become eeputy chief editor alongside existing Deputy Chief Editor Edmund Weiner

My headline comes from an interview with John published in Time, which you can read here.

"The Last Lexicographers"

That's the sub-heading in the conclusion to an article from the 15 April 2013 Publisher's Weekly. Journalist Gwenda Bond concludes her article, "The Changing World of Reference," by interviewing DSNA President Orin Hargraves. Here's an extended quotation:

At Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, publisher Bruce Nichols agrees that the digital future for reference is bright. "Unlike with commercial fiction, it's not going to e-book so much as other forms," Nichols says. "Our print sales are still strong enough to merit new titles, but are declining. Electronic licensing is doing really well." ...

HMH also purchased Webster's New World reference titles and CliffsNotes from Wiley late last year. A major new edition of Webster's New World College Dictionary will be released next year, and the publisher is currently exploring options to expand upon the popularity of the CliffsNotes Web site, which brings in significant advertising revenue. Nichols is concerned, however, about the potential impact of one long-term trend in the field. The drop in profitability of print editions of dictionaries in particular has resulted in fewer on-staff positions for lexicographers throughout the reference world. What that could mean for the quality of dictionaries in the future is an open question.

Author and lexicographer Orin Hargraves, current president of the Dictionary Society of North America, agrees that it's a concern, though the effects of the decline aren't being felt just yet. "Many things a[r]e still drawing on legacy resources," he says. "When the time comes that they are truly crowdsourced, quality will decline. Very few people instinctively know how to write a good definition." But with the average age of English-language lexicographers "well over 40," fewer openings to train new lexicographers for, and perhaps 100 remaining in the world (which Hargraves believes is actually enough), it could well become a problem to find qualified, dedicated professionals to provide the dictionary content of tomorrow and ensure changes to the English language are accurately captured and quantified. 

"It's a dilemma," says Hargraves."Lexicography is a useful skill when you're putting together dictionaries. But what about if a day comes when no one is?"

 

DCHP-1 Online now available

A Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles (Avis et al. 1967), is now available in open access. Open access is made possible thanks to Nelson Ltd., who hold the copyright to the work. An updated edition (DCHP-2) is expected to be completed by 2015, which will also be made accessible free of charge.

Peter Sokolowski on NPR's "Talk of the Nation"

National Public Radio picked up the Chronicle of Higher Education's story on digital dictionaries, and on 13 March 2013 "Talk of the Nation" host Neal Conan spoke with Merriam-Webster editor and DSNA member Peter Sokolowski about the phenomenon of "vocabulary events." You can read or listen to the story here.

In the Digital Era, Our Dictionaries Read Us

This long article, appearing in the 11 March 2013 Chronicle of Higher Education, offers a detailed survey of issues related to digital dictionaries; the idea for the article originated with the panel organized by DSNA Past President Michael Hancher at the 2013 MLA conference. The essay is a lively, detailed and thoughtful introduction to lexicography in the 21st century.  Author Jennifer Howard has interviewed many lexicographers and DSNA members, including Peter Sokolowski (left), Katherine Connor Martin, Ben Zimmer, Steve Kleinedler, Michael Rundell, Ingrid Goldstein, and Lisa Berglund.

"Digital Dictionaries": A panel in tweets

Michael Hancher reports: "Digital Dictionaries," a session organized for the recent MLA convention by the Discussion Group on Lexicography, traced the evolution of dictionaries from page to pixel. The three presentations that made up most of this session were reported or commented on via Twitter by more than a dozen people, some of whom were not even in the room (one was in the UK). Ben Zimmer, editor of the Visual Thesaurus, who gave one of the presentations, later organized the program listing and the 79 tweets in a legible format. Journalist Colleen Ross interviewed Ben and Merriam-Webster Editor- at-large Peter Sokolowski by phone and posted an account and a podcast at her blog, Word of Mouth. Vox audita perit, littera scripta manet?

Whole lotta word news

Two stories in last week's The New York Times feature contributions from DSNA members: you can read Grant Barrett's annual column on words of the year, an amusing, if dispiriting, 29-word summary of the last 12 months, here. Then, check out the intriguing story on a possible etymology for "the whole nine yards," which appeared in the Times the day after Christmas. Ben Zimmer (who was quoted in the article, along with fellow DSNA members Jesse Sheidlower and the late William Safire) has followed up with a discussion of the topic on his Word Routes column at the Visual Thesaurus. Of course, if you want to go the whole nine yards, check out the reader commentary on the Times piece, which is most remarkable for its cheerful refusal to accept the reported conclusions of word-sleuths Fred Shapiro and Bonnie Taylor-Blake.

In other word news, Oxford English Dictionaries apologized for the ghastly timing of its automated "word of the day" mailing, which sent out "bloodbath" as the word for 18 December, four days after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School. 

Meanwhile, word-of-the-year announcements continue, with "Gangnam Style" and "fiscal cliff" joining the queue at Collins.  Editor Ian Brookes noted that "Gangnam Style" has a good chance of making it into the dictionary itself, given its notable association with K-pop star Psy's most-watched youtube video of all time.

The American Dialect Society, which gravely brings up the rear of the WOTY nominations, is still soliciting nominations: according to their website, "Nominations can be sent by email to woty@americandialect.org, tweeted to the Twitter user name @americandialect or using the hashtag #woty12, or they can be posted on our Facebook page." ADS votes on the WOTY at the final session of its annual meeting, next Friday, January 4 at 5:30 pm in Boston.

And to wrap up my penultimate post of 2012, let me share the first few sentences of a news story from the December 20 Orangeburg County [South Carolina] Times and Democrat:

    An Orangeburg County man suffering from apparent mental issues was taken for treatment after parking his truck in the middle of the road, according to a Sheriff’s Office incident report.

    Around 8 a.m. Tuesday, callers stated a Ford truck was parked in the roadway on Moncks Corner Road in Eutawville. Deputies found a man sitting in the driver’s seat reading a dictionary.

    When asked why he had stopped in the roadway, he said Jesus had told him to do so, the report said. ...

And with that, on behalf of the Dictionary Society of North America, Happy New Year! I hope to see many of you in Boston at the DSNA reception on Saturday.

Choose your metaphor: Macmillan phasing out the print dictionary

In a blog post titled "Stop the presses – the end of the printed dictionary," Michael Rundell reports that Macmillan has "taken the decision to phase out printed dictionaries and focus on our rich and expanding collection of digital resources." He concludes, "Exiting print is a moment of liberation, because at last our dictionaries have found their ideal medium."

OED appeals for ante-dating data

From a press release:

The Oxford English Dictionary announces the launch of OED Appeals, a major online initiative set to involve the public in tracing the history of English words. Using a dedicated community space on the OED website, editors are soliciting help in unearthing new information about the history and usage of English, including the earliest examples of particular words. The website will enable the public to post evidence in direct response to OED editors online, fostering a collective effort to record the English language and find the true roots of our vocabulary. Appeals will be posted to the website on a frequent basis. Some of the entries the OED team is initially asking the public’s help with include bellini, blue-arsed fly, come in from the cold, disco, FAQ, in your dreams!, cooties, and Kwanzaa.

Chicago Demotic Dictionary Published Online

Here's a story from The New York Times reporting that the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago has completed a forty-year project of compiling a dictionary of Demotic, the language and cursive script of the common people of Ancient Egypt. Demotic is one of the three languages inscribed on the Rosetta Stone. You can access the dictionary itself at the Oriental Institute's website here. It's been a busy year or two for the lexicographers at the Oriental Institute--last summer this blog reported on their completion of the Assyrian Dictionary.