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…

- Kory Stamper

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…

- Kory Stamper

There's a measure of prescriptivism and descriptivism in every dictionary. Prescriptivism believes that the language should mirror the best practices…

- Kory Stamper

Lexicographers may be nerds who don't like human contact, but we're still people.

- Kory Stamper

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…

- Kory Stamper

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…

- Kory Stamper

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 …

- Kory Stamper

Whenever you try and simplify how people speak, it's just hard to squish them into a simple rule. Language doesn't work that way.

- Kory Stamper

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…

- Kory Stamper