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What is the hardest word to define?
Whats the longest word in English?
Credit: Michael Lionstar
These are just some of the questionsMerriam-Webster editor Kory Stamperhas to field when she tells people about her job.
There are actually books about dictionaries on the market, but theyre mostly scholarly and really dry.
Thats not my experience with this job.
Pantheon
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What was the inspiration for the book?
Whats the point of dictionaries in the Google age?
My hope is that people read this and love English more.
You share a surprising description of what its like working at the Merriam-Webster offices.
That little building, that cant be it.
I must be on the wrong street.
That is not the building that you think of when you think of a dictionary.
The only difference is that they have this weird job where they write dictionaries.
Has that changed the way people react now when you tell them youre an editor for Merriam-Webster?Yeah.
The first thing that people say is, Oh my god.
Are you the one who does the Merriam-Webster Twitter account?
Then I have to disappoint them and say, No, I dont.
Theres a woman in the New York office named Lauren who does the Twitter account.
People definitely are like, Ooh.
This is the sort of thing that lexicographers do in the face of that sort of thing.
Is it a twerk?
So YouTube is one.
Ive seen all sorts of stuff that ends up in the database, and thats always funny.
The best one was I saw was a while ago.
Someone had marked the Yellow Pages for interesting information.
I have marked beer bottles for things like mouthfeel.
You see that word inFood & Wineand inGourmetand inBon Appetit, but heres a beer manufacturer using the word.
That means its moving outside the pages of food.
Its still alcohol, but people are picking it up; that means its [usage] broadening.
I saw someone bring in empty and washed-out cans of cat food that they had found.
If you write dictionaries, you cant stop reading.
It was about how we are sanctioning the thing, and its because language is so personal to us.
We internalize language so much because thats one of our primary forms of communicating to people.
So youre really just reacting to the way the usage of the word has changed.Absolutely.
You have to go, A) That is not how language or dictionaries work.
B) Thats not how humanity works.
Words are a cultural marker.
And the dictionary follows the culture.
The learning curve on this job is crazy long.
You would have to come up with these new ways, new conversational ways of talking.
You say, Lets do laundry.
I can do this.
I know how to do this.
It was like my world had just shifted five degrees to the right.
I still write clunker definitions, dont get me wrong.
This is who I am.
This is what I do.
That probably happened eight years into my tenure as a lexicographer.
Word By Wordis currently available for purchase.Order it here.
