114: Begonia, average coral, and sea pink - Defining colour terms with Kory Stamper
Lingthusiasm - A podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics
Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne
4.8 • 791 Ratings
🗓️ 20 March 2026
⏱️ 54 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics. |
| 0:22.5 | I'm Lauren Gorn. |
| 0:23.5 | And I'm Gretchen McCulloch. |
| 0:24.7 | And today we're getting enthusiastic about color and how we describe it with Corey Stamper. |
| 0:29.6 | But first, our most recent bonus episode was all about idioms. |
| 0:33.8 | We go the extra mile to get to the bottom of why we should cut idioms some slack. |
| 0:39.9 | It's easier said than done. |
| 0:41.9 | Go to patreon.com slashlingthusiasm to get this and many other bonus episodes. Corey Stamper is a lexicographer and was associate editor at Merrimb Webster for almost two decades. |
| 1:05.8 | Her first book was Word by Word, The Secret Life of Dictionaries. |
| 1:08.8 | Her second book is out 31st of March, |
| 1:11.5 | 2026 and is titled True Color, the Strange and Spectacular Quest to Define Color, from Azure |
| 1:17.5 | to Zinc Pink. Welcome, Corey. Thank you. It's good to be here with both of you. It's so |
| 1:22.5 | lovely to have you here. And we're already off to a start where I'm like, you don't say Azure. |
| 1:28.3 | What? |
| 1:29.3 | So we're doing so great. |
| 1:32.3 | Corey, how did you get into lexicography? |
| 1:35.3 | It was pretty much an accident. |
| 1:38.3 | Back in my undergraduate, I was a medieval studies major, so I studied languages and literature primarily. |
| 1:45.7 | And after I got out of college, I thought, well, now what am I going to do? |
| 1:51.8 | And I answered, this is how long ago it was, I answered a want ad in the newspaper. |
| 1:56.8 | Oh, yeah. |
| 1:57.9 | Wow. |
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