We're not saying that marriage, the thing, is now open to anyone of any gender. We are saying, when the word marriage is used in this particular cont….
There's a measure of prescriptivism and descriptivism in every dictionary. Prescriptivism believes that the language should mirror the best practices….
Lexicographers may be nerds who don't like human contact, but we're still people..
Language is a signifier - it points to something. But those somethings change sometimes. Where the line comes down is that change is not in the dicti….
What makes autocorrect really interesting for a lexicographer is we read in a very weird way. A lot of times we'll catch things that are so clearly a….
We want to emulate the educated class, even if we don't think of educated people as a class these days..
It's very easy, when things like the gay marriage write-in happen, to get sick of how people view language and say, "ah, come on it's just a dictiona….
I think when dictionaries define words, there's a sort of hair-splitting that to most people doesn't make any sense, which is we're not describing wh….
I make the case in the book that Standard English, that language we all aspire to live and move and have our being within, is actually based on a fic….
It's difficult to sit down and write a letter back saying, "you know what, even if we remove the word from the dictionary, people will still continue….
Language is the primary way we communicate with each other, and we have really strong feelings about what words mean, and about good language and bad….
You will hear people say the C-word. Except, it's a regional language: in British English, c - t has much less of an inflammatory sense than it does ….
Back in the 19th century, our marketing folks decided to play up the refined usage angle because prescriptivism was very popular: our dictionary is w….
With "marriage," the word gets applied to same-sex marriages by proponents and opponents alike. That means the word itself is changing, and we reflec….
Most people, if they think at all about the dictionary, think of it as this fixed object given to us from on high. It is the thing that legitimizes l….
I don't know that I would say words are more political now, particularly after Donald Trump has come into office. I will say that what I notice is th….
I certainly self-police my language depending on who I'm talking to. I try to be very careful about using filler words, about not drawling certain vo….
A lot of people thought oh, we caught the dictionary in racism, or all it takes is a whole bunch of people saying that a word is bad for the dictiona….
The initial 18th-, 19th-century intention was to give the less-educated lower classes a way to move up into this new, rising middle class, to enable ….
The history of English is full of that, lots of things done with good intentions that 200 years down the road have resulted in a giant mess, where so….
Words have always been political, and that means that, in many people's minds, dictionaries are political. Because that's what dictionaries do: they ….
