The Lexicographer's Rules

My glossary of some of the words of the year was published in the New York Times today.

Oh, and we got a mention, along with Paul McFedries’ Word Spy, on the Reuters newswire today.

How to Write Worse and Improve Your Spinnish.

Last night I was a guest on the Open Source public radio show with Erin McKean, Geoff Nunberg, and Jim Fitzmorris.

On Sunday, my third annual words-of-the-year list will run in the “Year in Review” section of the New York Times. It’s hard making these lists: there are always great expressions that aren’t particularly new that I want to include, I always have too many in my first draft—which the Times editors are efficient at whittling down to a manageable size—and I always want to change the list later, when it’s too late, when I realize I left off words that really deserve to be included. They just have to be included, it feels like.

Fortunately, I have a second chance when I make my nominations list for the American Dialect Society’s words-of-the-year vote. This is the vote, the one other organizations are trying to beat by releasing their own WOTY lists in October and November. Look for ADS WOTY nominations to go online in the next week!

However, that’s one less WOTY list than I’ve been making for the last few years, when I was also contributing to Oxford University Press’s annual word-of-the-year press release. Trying to keep all three lists both current, accurate, and with very little overlap was hard indeed.

On a side note, today I did a very pleasant interview with Freestyle on CBC. It was more of a conversation than an interview. I don’t see downloadable or streamable versions of the show, alas.

I’ve been bursting to tell this news for weeks, and now the word is out. Starting in January, I’ll be sitting with Martha Barnette as cohost of the long-running KPBS radio show A Way With Words.

By the time our new shows air in January, we will have been working hard for months to bring out radio skills I haven’t used in nearly 15 years. We’re also spiffing up some new segments of the show that I’m betting everybody will enjoy.

The main difficulty so far is that Martha and I tend to cut-up and horse around when we get together behind the microphones, so everything takes longer than it should. Martha cracks me up. There’ll be hella big blooper and blue reels when this season is over, let me tell you. I think half of it will be our patient but long-suffering producer trying to rein in the two of us as we trade verbal towel-snapping and the like.

Read the press release from KPBS in San Diego.

A Way With Words main web site.

Martha Barnette’s web site and her blog.