For word lovers everywhere, there is a gift that keeps on giving, namely the Dictionary. Enjoyed this post by author Deborah Lee Luskin…thanks for the permission to re-blog.
Word By Word by Kory Stamper
“Language is one of the few common experiences humanity has.”
So begins the Preface to Kory Stamper’s wonderful memoir, Word By Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries.
Hanging on Stamper’s personal narrative about how she came to be a lexicographer at Merriam-Webster and what that work is like is the entertaining history of the English words with which humans have recorded their knowledge, experience, beliefs and discoveries. This discussion of words also includes a discussion of linguistic prejudice, that attitude that self-appointed grammar police cop when someone doesn’t follow their[1]* prescribed rules.
You’d be correct if you imagined that dictionary editors spend eight hours a day in silent study, but you’d be dead wrong if for a moment you thought that reading about it would be boring.
Stamper writes with attitude.
That attitude arises from the little thought any normal person…
View original post 321 more words
SOMETIMES 