Welcome to Litsy!

Great book on being a lexicographer, working on dictionaries, and the strange English language. It made me laugh several times.

I have started this book about people who make dictionaries and about the peculiarities of English. Not as clear cut as high school English teachers sometimes tell us. I'm a “wordy“ and am feeding a Scrabble passion with a friend right now.

Canard: this was either in my reading or a puzzle this week and I needed to double check the meaning. The -ard reminds me of mallard so I keep seeing ducks when I hear this word. Interesting that there is also an airplane related meaning…
#weirdwords @CBee

This was top notch. I loved every minute I spent reading it. Laugh-out-loud funny, smart, and playfully informative, it is a new favorite of mine. #catsoflitsy

“Standard English as it is presented by grammarians and pedants is a dialect that is based on a mostly fictional, static, and Platonic ideal of usage. Under this mentality, the idea that the best practices of English change with time is anathema. It doesn‘t preserve English so much as pickle it.”

This book feels like my brain works—ruminating, categorizing, inviting enlightenment that isn‘t likely to come. I can‘t help but romanticize the process of examining language like this. At the same time, I‘ve spent years pushing back against rubrics for standardized language. Hundo percent would recommend.

Treating myself to a banana chai latte and some reading this morning.

I laugh at myself for wanting to rave about a book on writing dictionaries😂. This book is SO GOOD. The author‘s wit and humor make this an entertaining read. So many good quotes, but I‘ll settle on this one.

“The history of English is full of messiness and illogic because the English language is a true democracy, built entirely by the people who use and have used it, and people, generally speaking, are messy and illogical…

"The goal of a dictionary is to tell people what words mean and show them how they are used in the most objective, dispassionate, and robotic way possible. People do not come to the dictionary for excitement and romance; that's what encyclopedias are for." ? This may be my favorite line from this book.

April 2021 report

I heard from my writing friends that it was Independent Bookstore day. Decided to make a special trip to visit one near me. I ordered from them a few times last summer, but this was my first time in the store! They told me I could have as many stickers as I wanted — but I controlled myself and only snagged 3 😅

Combination of memoir, history of lexicography, and explanation of what it is modern lexicographers actually do.

Consistently informative and well-written enough to keep the reader turning the pages. I loved every page of it.

#coffeeandabook

It‘s easy for lexicographers to forget that they are not the gold standard for “normal.”

Seriously? Undergraduates can do courses in mediaeval Icelandic family sagas in America? Why has nobody mentioned this before? 😎😎😎

I am the princess on my hill, this is looking out my bedroom window on a gorgeous morning.

Very enjoyable, and it kind of makes working for a dictionary sound tempting... apart from the “being stuck in the S section forever“ part of editing.

So lately I have to put my books somewhere inconvenient to get me to read them through constantly interacting with them and keeping them in my mind, right? And that means they're on my armchair. But I was doing my lunchtime reading date and squirmed and... got comfy around the pile.

It obligingly rained too so I was really very comfy, and Word by Word continues to be fascinating. Today I read about her struggle with the word "irregardless".

Loving this! I should be reading stuff about Sir Kay, but instead... here I am. There's a great bit about how the editors figure out transitive verbs for the dictionary. They have a slip of paper, inherited from editors of yore, with the text “I'mma ____ your ass“. The ____ is actually a cut out blank space. If you lay that over the word in question, and it makes sense as a sentence, it's transitive. They refer to it as the Transitivity Tester.

1. Word by Word by Kory Stamper
2. Riley Can't Stop Crying by Stéphanie Boulay
3. The Greatest Love Story Ever Told: An Oral History by Megan Mullally

Thank you @rachelbrittain #WeekendReads

The transitivity tester! This book is geek indulgence.

Sunday is for self care and indulgence.

A really incredible look into the world of lexicography and the creation of dictionaries from a Meriam-Webster lexicographer. Occasionally gets bogged down in jargon & minutia but truly an excellent read for English language lovers. Highlights include: pronunciations of the word "nuclear" & everything about how fixed grammar rules are mostly bogus because language is in flux (see: why preposition *can* be at the end of a sentence). Just fantastic.

Today's plans, summer up in one photo.

2. Word by Word and One to Watch

2. Riot Baby

3. Get through / review as much as possible of my ridiculous Netgalley backlog

#WeekendReads

This book is giving me LIFE and lots of good background / proof for my soapbox of strict adherence to 'Standard English' being elitist. It's just one dialect of English! Made up by old white men who willy-nilly pulled rules over from Latin and French that have no place in a Germanic language like English.

"So where do these rules come from if not actual use? Most of them are the personal peeves, codified into law, of dead white men of yore."

Probably won't finish this one before the end of the day, but getting in some good NYE reading all the same.

Espresso chai + some stellar nonfiction

A delightful journey through the world of lexicography! I enjoyed this memoir while learning a lot about the business, practice and history of writing dictionaries. Quite a lovely way to spend several Sunday mornings.

A little reading break after a morning and afternoon of chores

Saturday morning with book, pup, and espresso chai

Looking for spots of brightness this week and coming home to a bunch of new / used books definitely makes for one. Think I might start Word by Word later today.

"It is your memento moron: no matter how smart or excellent, remember that you, too, will fuck up."

We all have them. And this term makes them sound so erudite! ???

August #doublespin done! @TheAromaofBooks

In a word, de-freaking-lightful. I really enjoyed this and recommend it to anyone who loves words or wants a glimpse into the world of lexicography. If you've read and liked this, I also recommend the podcast Something Rhymes with Purple, which is all about words too and very enjoyable.

Thanks again for sending me this @REPollock 😃

"Maybe you're a polyglot, collecting languages like lucky pennies, cherishing their differences and similarities until you can evoke an entire language's feel and weight by running your thumb over the face of one word."

❤️

Yup, it's a book about writing dictionaries and our it's SO good.

4/5🌟

Fascinating look at how dictionaries are created. I particularly appreciated the part about dictionaries offering the way words are used, not dictating what they mean. I‘ve always assume it was the other way, as I think a lot of people do.

(random internet picture, not my books)

“As English grows, it lives its own life, and this is right and healthy. Sometimes English does exactly what we think it should; sometimes it goes places we don‘t like and thrives there in spite of all our worrying. We can tell it to clean itself up and act more like Latin; we can throw tantrums and start learning French instead. But we will never really be the boss of it.”

Basically, my 8th grade English teacher can stop haunting me now.

“Language is one of the few common experiences humanity has. Not all of us can walk; not all of us can sing; not all of us like pickles. But we all have an inborn desire to communicate why we can‘t walk or sing or stomach pickles.”

Kory Stamper writes dictionaries, which is a seriously cool job, if you ask me. In this book, she explains how she became a lexicographer and how dictionaries come together.

When an author spends more than a decade rassling with words and their enigmatic meanings, you can only expect her book to be intoxicatingly poetic and wickedly hilarious! 😁🙌🏻 After reading such a detailed view of life as a lexicographer and their utterly daunting task to define our complex language, this word nerd will happily genuflect at their feet. 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
#BookSpin
And look @TheAromaofBooks , she even mentions P.G.! 👀

Oops, I‘m a little late to this party:
1. Would you believe she was a Halloween character? 🤣
2. Editor ✏️
3. Reading, movies, freelance projects, making meals for my Mom and plenty of yard work 😅
4. Tagged📚
5. Meditating with Insight Timer app, watching Mary Chapin Carpenter‘s uplifting Instagram videos, enjoying #LitsyLove mail from the sweetest pen pals, watching comedies instead of news and counting my blessings.❤️
@Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks

Here are my May #BookSpin results! I get to hang out with a Word Nerd and a Food Critic. What fun! Thanks to our amazing #BookMom @TheAromaofBooks 🥰 P.G. is smack in the middle at 11, but at least the other book you gave me came in 1st. I‘ll start with these and see how far I get. Happy Reading to all #BookSpinners! 🤓

Kory is a lexicographer with Merriam-Webster. She, along with her team, are responsible for writing each version of the company's dictionary. This involves going through the ALL the words - updating their definitions, and adding new words. The book starts out with Kory nervously interviewing at Merriam-Webster and each subsequent chapter addresses an issue in lexicography. She has a way with words (surprise!) and a big personality.

I love what she did with the Acknowledgments. 🤓😎

This book is killing me. I laugh often. 😎

Lexicography is more stressful that I thought.

I find myself laughing out loud regularly. Highly entertaining.

Kory has a way with words as I guess a lexicographer would.