Hey there, I'm Jason Gatz and you're listening to Think Again, a Big Think podcast.

Started in 2008, Big Think is a kind of online think tank of big ideas from some of the most creative thinkers on the planet.

On the podcast, we revisit these ideas in new ways.

Our producers surprise me and my guests with short interview clips from Big Things Archives,

ideas that we didn't necessarily come here expecting to discuss.

I'm very, very happy to be here today with Corey Stamper.

She's a lexicographer at Merriam-Webster, which for some reason I want to pronounce Miriam all the time, often seen on their, and maybe Corey can explain why, I don't know, often seen on their Ask the Editor video series.

Her funny and fascinating book, Word by Word, The Secret Life of Dictionaries, is about how the sausage of dictionaries is made, at least at Merriam-Webster, and about the

slipperiness of words themselves. This is not a prescriptivist manifesto,

fussily criticizing people's misuse of apostrophes or words like irregardless.

On the contrary, like any lexicographer worth her salt, and salt, as Corey will tell

you, was one so valuable it was used as money, which is where we get the word salary from. Corey is a professional descriptivist, painstakingly

trying to pin down how words are actually used even as they struggle to wriggle away from her.

Welcome to think again, Corey. Thanks. Okay. So my most pressing question for you today is, does Pumpernickel really mean fart goblin

in German?

And what does that tell us about Pumpernickel and about the German people?

Well, I have actually heard from some Germans who believe that Pumpernickel does not mean fart goblin.

Oh.

But our evidence shows that pumpernickel is from the verb Pompern, which is a 17th century

dialect verb that means to break wind.

Okay.

And nickel is from the, it's a a it's from the common name Nicholas but it also

...