Dictionary Society of North America

DSNA members in the news

My Google alerts are overflowing with the doings of DSNA members:

Peter Sokolowski, editor-at-large at Merriam Webster, reports that the most looked-up words in 2012 were capitalism and socialism, while malarkey enjoyed the biggest one-day spike. Here's one version of the story, from the Christian Science Monitor.

Check out this interview with American Heritage Dictionary Executive Editor Steve Kleinedler. He is talking with Robin Young on  WBUR's program "Here and Now" about "Words We ‘Literally’ Want Out Of The Dictionary."

Meanwhile, in Athens, Georgia,  The Red and Black has a story on the lexicography course taught by our 2013 DSNA meeting host Don McCreary: check out this short feature now to whet your appetite for the 2012 volume of Dictionaries (to be published later this month), which includes Don's article on his students' ongoing project  "Dawgspeak: The Slanguage Dictionary of the University of Georgia."

Dictionaries, drugs and f-bombs

The blogs are buzzing with the news that Merriam-Webster has added the word "f-bomb" to its Collegiate Dictionary; associate editor Kory Stamper traces the euphemism to a 1988 Newsday story in which Mets catcher Gary Carter spoke of giving up profanity. And how do you like this photo from the website 7 Days in Dubai, which depicts a pair of hollowed-out dictionaries being used to smuggle marijuana? (Sorry I couldn't post the photo here.)  Yet people say that electronic media will make the paper dictionary obsolete... You can see why I'm indexing this post as "practical lexicography."

DARE celebrated in the Wall Street Journal

So many bloggers, newspapers and other media have been celebrating the completion of the fifth and final volume of the Dictionary of American Regional English that this blog hasn't even tried to keep up with the plaudits and commemorations. But the article in today's Wall Street Journal,  "Frog Hair to Woolies: Dust Bunnies by 173 Other Names," is particularly good. In addition to finding inevitable pleasure in the diversity of American regional English, it quotes DARE chief editor  Joan Houston Hall and Wordnik founder Erin McKean (both members of DSNA). Plus it has some great interactive graphics and photographs, including this one of founding editor Frederic Cassidy.

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.

More news of slang dictionaries

Right now Samir Rahim is complaining in The Telegraph (I found the story on the New Yorker's Book Bench blog) that established dictionaries shouldn't try to keep up with Urban Dictionary and the other slang lexicons, concluding with the admonition: "read online dictionaries for fun; read Chambers and the COD to get it right." Apparently the FBI didn't get the message; a story on The Smoking Gun website explains that the feds turned to the crowd-sourced lexicon to confirm that a slang expression posted by the suspect on his Facebook page was in fact a homicidal threat. (It has too many four- and ten-letter-words for this prim blog to report, but you can check out the original for yourself here.)  The FBI formally cited the Urban Dictionary in their complaint.

Of course, high school teachers have been using the Urban Dictionary for years to figure out whether their students are being disrespectful or hip. So now do they turn to the Concise OED?

Rock that usage!

Here's another report from the DSNA Montreal conference, this time in The Montreal Gazette. Ben Zimmer's paper on hip-hop takes center stage, but reporter Karen Seidman also has a keen eye for lexicographical haberdashery. And after quoting Michael Adams on Ammon Shea's analysis of  the shocking academic practice of misciting lexicons, she ruefully continues:

        Some academics may actually refer to "the dictionary" as if there  is only one.

        Dimwits! (Okay, I have to fess up--I referred to "the dictionary" in the first five seconds  of  my  interview with Zimmer. I definitely did not rock that usage.)

The rest of her witty story, "Chillax, English is always evolving," is available here.



"New bible of slang..."

A robust appreciation of DSNA member Jonathon Green's Dictionary of Slang (Chambers 2010) appears on the cnn.com blog. Mark Peters raves that Jonathon Green is even more entertaining than George Carlin.

Getting the word out (3): Dawgspeak Lexicography

I don't often send our readers to blogs with disemvoweled titles, but check out this rave of DSNA member Don McCreary on the blog Sh*t, D*mn, F*ck, and Cheez-*its. "Nina," a student at the University at Georgia, celebrates Professor McCreary's course on lexicography, in which students update the lexicon of local slang, known as "dawgspeak." Nina cheers: "In all honesty, this class was probably one of my favorite classes in my entire college career. I've never laughed so hard while learning so much."