54. The Authority
The Allusionist
Helen Zaltzman
4.7 • 3.8K Ratings
🗓️ 14 April 2017
⏱️ 14 minutes
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Summary
“Sometimes you want to make the dictionary sexy but it’s just not a sexy thing,” says Kory Stamper, lexicographer for the Merriam-Webster dictionaries. Sorry if this is disillusioning news for you. The dictionary is not a sexy thing, but as Kory explains, it is a fascinating, complicated, exacting thing.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the illusionist in which I, Helen Zoltzman, throw a towel over language because |
| 0:08.6 | not every beach is a nudist beach. |
| 0:13.5 | On with the show. |
| 0:22.2 | What is the function of a dictionary? |
| 0:24.2 | Oh boy! |
| 0:25.2 | Sorry! |
| 0:26.2 | How many hours we got? |
| 0:27.6 | You wrote up 270 pages on it, so... |
| 0:30.1 | Right. |
| 0:32.1 | Corey Stamper is the author of the new book, Word by Word, The Secret Life of Dictionaries. |
| 0:37.7 | Her regular job is writing dictionaries for Maryam Webster, where she's been working |
| 0:41.8 | since 1998. |
| 0:43.8 | So primarily, the function of a dictionary is to record as much of the language in use |
| 0:49.8 | as it can as that language is used and not as we wish that language is used. |
| 0:56.2 | So many people assume dictionaries function as gatekeepers of proper English that they |
| 1:04.2 | don't let wrong words in or ugly words in or bad words in, and that's just not true. |
| 1:10.6 | Any word that's used in print is fair game for entry into a dictionary. |
| 1:16.3 | So that's the first usually mind-blowing thing about dictionaries. |
| 1:22.4 | The other is you're trying to gather as much of the language as possible, and that means |
| 1:29.3 | that you're going for everything from historical uses all the way to a modern slang, but you |
| 1:38.9 | know you're not going to catch it all. |
| 1:40.4 | You know you just can't catch it all. |
... |
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