The Lexicographer's Rules

Despite its ridiculously hagiographic overtones—"leading lexicographer of our time” and “greatest living lexicographer” are just two of the preposterously unverifiable statements in the article, and the first one is in the headline—I recommend taking a look at this interesting D Magazine article about Bryan Garner, author of Garner’s Modern American Usage and editor of Black’s Law Dictionary (8e).

Joan Houston Hall, editor in chief of the Dictionary of American Regional English, answers questions for David Medaris of The Daily Page in preparation for the Wisconsin Book Festival October 10-14, 2007.

What question has nobody ever asked you about DARE that you most wish someone would ask, and how would you answer it?

“How is it that you’re making such swift progress? The Oxford English Dictionary took much longer.” I would probably have to pick up my teeth from the ground before crying, “Oh, thank you for understanding what it takes to create a work like this!”

By the way, there are two dictionary-related holidays coming up. One is October 10, Frederic G. Cassidy Day, which the staff of DARE and others will be celebrating at the book festival. As Joan discusses in the article above, Fred was the long-time chief editor of DARE and he would have turned 100 on that day. An official proclamation was approved last year proclaiming that the official way to celebrate Frederic G. Cassidy day is to toss back a shot of rum (Jamaican, if you have it, since Fred was Jamaican) and shout “On to Zee!”

Also, October 16 is Dictionary Day, celebrating the birth of Noah Webster, who would have been 249 this year. The proper way to celebrate that is to stand on street corners reading your favorite dictionary entries to passersby. Lexicographers no longer carry out the airing of grievances: too many people were hurt by being whacked up side the head with Webster’s Third New International Dictionary.

Colleague and friend Erin McKean is guestblogging about dictionaries and lexicography this week over at The Volokh Conspiracy.

Part 1: The Myth of the Lexicographer-Judge. “The other myth about lexicographers is that we are horrified, appalled, and indeed, quite put out when we see misspellings, nonstandard usages, slang, or informality in general. This is ridiculous—it’s like expecting doctors to faint at the sight of blood.”

Part 2: Why Inartful Isn’t In. “When thinking about how words enter a dictionary, the most important thing to understand is that there are many, many more words than there are places in any current dictionary. Because of this scarcity, lexicographers are driven to a kind of triage. Often, the question isn’t ‘how can I justify including this word?’ but ‘How can I justify EXCLUDING this word?’”

Part 3: That’s Not a Word! “Words aren’t like Bigfoot: a moment’s glimpse of a fabled creature isn’t sufficient proof for cryptozoology. But just one momentary use is perfectly fine for determining whether or not a word is ‘real.’ The big question is what you can do with it, not whether it exists in the first place.”

Update:

Part 4: Dictionary Myths. “The beautiful thing about lexicography: it’s important, and you work hard to make the best dictionaries you can, but it’s not (as the joke goes) rocket surgery: the odds of someone dying because there’s a typo in an entry are very, very low.”

Joan Hall, editor of the Dictionary of American Regional English, forwarded this link to the email list of the Dictionary Society of North America: The Gifted in Pursuit of the Valued from Americana Exchange.

It’s a long, contemplative story (including an audio interview) about Madeleine Kripke, a New York City rare book dealer and antiquarian who specializes in dictionaries. Her collection is staggering: more than 20,000 items. Few libraries have anything like it, not only because of her particular taste and knowledge of the works she collects, but because her works are often for sale to lexicographers and, better, she often will loan them to lexicographers who are doing lexical work or research, as you can see in Simon Winchester’s The Meaning of Everything, a book about the Oxford English Dictionary, where he writes that she “kindly copied many rare papers and documents from her immense collection of dictionaryalia, and offered much sage advice.”

I know Madeline through the Dictionary Society of North America. This year at our biennial meeting in Chicago there was a silent auction for a number of reference works that had belonged to the now defunct dictionary department of the publisher Scott Foresman, now Pearson Scott Foresman, which graciously donated them for the benefit of the Society. Madeleine beat me out on a complete bound set of the Middle English Dictionary at $300, but I’m happy to say that I did score an entire set of the Scottish National Dictionary (available online as part of the Dictionary of the Scots Language) for a very reasonable $75.

In any case, do read the article. The descriptions, written by Madeleine herself, of her rare and interesting works are tantalizing.

One of the more interesting aspects of the new Shorter Oxford English Dictionary is that the editorial team, lead by Angus Stevenson, (not Jesse Sheidlower, as mistakenly reported by the American Spectator; Jesse is only doing publicity for the new edition) chose to remove the hyphens from many words. BBC has a fairly decent story about it, and gives these changes:

Became two unhyphenated words
Fig leaf
Hobby horse
Ice cream
Pin money
Pot belly
Test tube

Became one word
Bumblebee
Chickpea
Crybaby
Leapfrog
Logjam

I should also add that if cost is not an object, the Shorter is the dictionary I recommend as a reliable dictionary for household, office, or school use. It does tend to skew a bit British, but with the latest edition, I gather that much more attention has been paid to making sure that North American terms, meanings, and pronunciations are included.

If you’re more price-conscious, I now recommend Webster’s New World College. This is a change over past recommendations.

If you insist on a free dictionary, then I recommend OneLook, where you’ll find several reliable dictionaries indexed and searchable from a single interface (including my Double-Tongued Dictionary).