The Lexicographer's Rules

Cool post about training to escape a submarine. It came up in my searches for slang because it contains the word “bubblehead.” (Source Link)

My pals Damien and Cameron Barrett tried out for the Howie Mandel game show Deal or No Deal.

I know them both through the wonders of the intarweb. We always joke about me being their third twin: They’re twins, so am I; our last names are the same; and we’re all three big computer geeks.

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William Safire writes in his “On Language” column in the New York Times this week:

“You can find a variety of senses for the word bump in our leading dictionaries.…But the sense that lexicographers are slow in recording is racing through our vocabulary, filling a word void. What term do we use today for the visible manifestation of pregnancy?”

Dude, I know it’s not a print dictionary, but I recorded a citation for that term last fall. Booya!

In researching the entry for Jenny Crank the other day, I found a great example of what a bad contextual advertising algorithm looks like:

Crank is a well-established slang term for methamphetamine.

Susan Walker sent me a note telling me that my entry for repot inspired her article at Fox News about making a career change. (Source Link)