Vocabulary.com Blog
Articles about Linguistics
"How do I get my word in the dictionary?" This is a question that lexicographers in the Lounge and elsewhere are asked more often than you might expect. While it might be unkind to characterize the sort of person who asks the question, we hope it will be instructive to describe how new words actually make their way into dictionaries. That, in turn, should reveal why there are probably many better things to do in life than getting one's word in the dictionary. By doing some of them, you might get your word in anyway.
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After months in a teeming sea of words, the Loungeurs have crawled to shore to issue a report. It turns out that computers have as much to teach us about language as we have to teach them!
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This month we open the kimono for lounge visitors and reveal why Samuel Johnson, all those many years ago, characterized lexicographers as harmless drudges.
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Professor Anne Curzan
of the University of Michigan studies the history of English. "I have a great job," she says, one where she challenges people to rethink their ideas of how language works. In addition to teaching, she co-edits the respected Journal of English Linguistics
and is also on the usage panel of the The American Heritage Dictionary. We had a fascinating and wide-ranging conversation with her about the history of English, medieval language, gender in language and more. Our conversation was so intriguing we broke it into two parts. Here's part one:
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Geoffrey Pullum, the co-creator of the language website Language Log, sums up his site's popularity this way: "A: We like to have fun. B: We enjoy writing. And C: We're linguists." Over 40,000 people a week visit for a smart, witty, wry -- and, yes, fun -- take on how we use this English language of ours. Now Geoffrey and his collaborator Mark Liberman, both linguistics professors, have captured the flavor of their website in a new book called Far from the Madding Gerund and Other Dispatches from Language Log. We called Geoffrey to talk about his work.
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The Sports Closet - an area of the Lounge hitherto closed to visitors - is thrown open this month as we examine some linguistics curiosities brought to light by the recent World Cup.
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"Reading the dictionary" sounds like a punishment
to most people, or an activity undertaken only by the hopelessly bored or
academically inclined. It is, however, an activity that word lovers indulge in
unashamedly from time to time.
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