[I was looking for info on Anne Soukhanov, a legendary lexicographer who edited several major dictionaries, and stumbled on this article re-posted from the Washington Post website's Archives.]
Dueling Dictionaries By Linton Weeks June 28, 2001 When the 1,728-page Microsoft Encarta College Dictionary appears in bookstores next month, "it will start the Third World War of Dictionaries," says its top American editor, Anne Soukhanov. "It will shake things up," says Michael Agnes, editor in chief of Webster's New World dictionaries. The dueling lexicographers may be right. We could be on the verge of an all-out melee, with a handful of book-publishing bruisers fighting for lucrative desk space among students, teachers and office workers. Among the combatants: Random House, Merriam-Webster and American Heritage.
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[This article originally published on Chicago Manual of Style Shop Talk website.] Peter Sokolowski is editor at large at Merriam-Webster, where he works on the Word of the Day podcast, Ask the Editor videos, and short articles about word trends and etymologies (which he also presents on Twitter). In addition to attending professional and academic conferences to talk about dictionaries, he conducts workshops for teachers of English as a second language, serves as pronouncer for spelling bees around the world, and is a substitute jazz host for New England Public Radio. (We also hear he plays a mean jazz trumpet.) Here he talks with Shop Talk editor Carol Fisher Saller. CFS: Recently I was lucky enough to hear you speak about what lexicographers can deduce from the words people look up at Merriam-Webster.com. You gave examples of how a political or celebrity event can cause certain “lookups” to spike—such as the word emaciated when Michael Jackson died. Later I saw your tweet about the spiking of canonize and homily when Pope Francis visited the US. I believe you said that more than a billion words a year are looked up at the M-W Dictionary website and apps. What I’d like to know is, how do you keep an eye on a billion lookups? What kind of tools do you have and how do you use them? |
Corybantic(adj.) wild and frenzied; from Greek κορυβαντες (Korybantes) Archives
June 2022
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