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Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries Hardcover – 14 Mar. 2017

by Kory Stamper (Author)

4.5 1,122 ratings

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Do you have strong feelings about the word “irregardless”? Have you ever tried to define the word “is”? Brimming with intelligence and personality, this vastly entertaining account of how dictionaries are made is a must-read for word mavens.

Many of us take dictionaries for granted, and few may realize that the process of writing dictionaries is, in fact, as lively and dynamic as language itself. With sharp wit and irreverence, Kory Stamper cracks open the complex, obsessive world of lexicography, from the agonizing decisions about what to define and how to do it, to the knotty questions of usage in an ever-changing language. She explains why small words are the most difficult to define, how it can take nine months to define a single word, and how our biases about language and pronunciation can have tremendous social influence. And along the way, she reveals little-known surprises—for example, the fact that “OMG” was first used in a letter to Winston Churchill in 1917.

Word by Word brings to life the hallowed halls (and highly idiosyncratic cubicles) of Merriam-Webster, a startlingly rich world inhabited by quirky and erudite individuals who quietly shape the way we communicate. Certain to be a delight for all lovers of words, Stamper’s debut will make you laugh as much as it makes you appreciate the wonderful complexities and eccentricities of the English language.

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ISBN-10

9781101870945
ISBN-13

978-1101870945
Edition

First Edition - 1st Printing
Publisher

Pantheon
Publication date

14 Mar. 2017
Language

English
Dimensions

14.61 x 2.79 x 21.59 cm
Print length

320 pages
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Product description

About the Author

KORY STAMPER is a lexicographer at Merriam-Webster, where she also writes, edits, and appears in the “Ask the Editor” video series. She blogs regularly on language and lexicography at www.korystamper.com, and her writing has appeared in The Guardian and The New York Times, and on Slate.com.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 110187094X
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Pantheon; First Edition - 1st Printing (14 Mar. 2017)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9781101870945
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1101870945
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 14.61 x 2.79 x 21.59 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 1,203,053 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 1,656 in Art Encyclopaedias
- 4,694 in Dictionaries & Thesauri
- 26,601 in Languages

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4.5 1,122 ratings

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Kory Stamper

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Kory Stamper is a lexicographer (that is, a writer and editor of dictionaries) who worked for nearly two decades at Merriam-Webster (the dictionary). She has written and appeared in the "Ask the Editor" video series at Merriam-Webster, and has traveled around the world giving talks and lectures on language and lexicography. Her writing has appeared in a number of publications, including The Washington Post, The Guardian and The New York Times. You can find her blog at harmlessdrudgery.com. A medievalist by training, she knows a number of languages, most of them dead. She drinks more coffee and owns more dictionaries than is good for anyone.

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SW

Brilliant!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 6 April 2017

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This book is absolutely wonderful. It's so well written — really informative and full of erudition. But although it possesses both those characteristics, it's never dull — and it could well have been very dull indeed. Quite to the contrary, in fact; this book is chock a block full of humor. I haven't laughed out loud while reading a book like this for years. And make no mistake, this is a serious book! There are individual words and chapters that are gems — the chapter on pronunciation and the discussion on the definition of marriage are good examples.

It's a book that should be read by anyone with a layman's interest in the English language.

Bravo! (mid 18th century: from French, from Italian, literally ‘bold’ (see brave)

4 people found this helpful

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Kay Niyazi

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 21 April 2017

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Brilliantly insightful to the heroic life of the lexographer

One person found this helpful

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Nauti

Could have been better

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 28 December 2020

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I knew nothing about lexicography and the world of dictionaries before reading this book. So it was definitely a worthwhile endeavour. But “endeavour” is what it felt like! The writing is dry and there isn’t an overarching narrative - just a collection of many anecdotes. But it did inspire me to look for a “grown up” dictionary and having done my research I settled on The Chamber’s 13th edition !

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T. R. Mortimer

Mixed feelings, as when seeing a politician drive your new car over Beachy Head...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 January 2018

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I am a word enthusiast, but old-fashioned, and believe that dictionaries should primarily prescribe correctness. Unfortunately they are commercial enterprises, and describe usage, and follow trends. This one is, what's worse, written in American, although Stamper persists in calling it English.
Nevertheless, entertaining, but my Webster is old (so am I) and I could not find many of the words she uses in her text, and was force to resort to the dreaded Google.. Worth reading for fun, but not for enlightened instruction.

3 people found this helpful

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Mark Richards

this book is great. If all of that sounds incredibly boring

Reviewed in Canada on 8 January 2018

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If you are interested in how dictionaries are made, or linguistics in practice, or think you might be, this book is great. If all of that sounds incredibly boring, you're in the wrong place. I really enjoyed reading this and my only complaint is that the book is too short and doesn't contain amusing anecdotes for every single entry in the dictionary.

Hannah

A Sublime Romp

Reviewed in the United States on 15 May 2017

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For many people, the dictionary is a relic once used by grandparents and is now, in its retirement, relegated to the dishonorable position of dust-covered doorstop. Lexicographers – those quiet, anti-social compilers of dictionaries – are, presumably, a thing of the past. Not so, proclaims Kory Stamper, longstanding lexicographer for Merriam-Webster. In this rousing debut that unveils the complicated craft of defining words and the science of unearthing the etymological origins of their meaning, Stamper proves the dictionary is a lexical reference that’s long been taken for granted.

Stamper sets the tone in her opening chapter, giving readers a first taste of what’s to come: a candid portrayal of the ins and outs of lexicography, delivered with sharp wit and exactitude. Recalling the day she was hired by Merriam-Webster, Stamper invites readers to the hushed confines and inelegant cubicles of the “modest two-story brick building” in Springfield, Massachusetts where word mavens work, in some instances for months at a time, to extricate the definition, pronunciation, and etymological origin of individual words. Such work requires a reverence for the English language not found in the average person.

"Lexicographers spend a lifetime swimming through the English language in a way that no one else does; the very nature of lexicography demands it. English is a beautiful, bewildering language, and the deeper you dive into it, the more effort it takes to come up to the surface for air."

Wading through the English language to pinpoint the perfect definition of a word requires a noiseless work environment. The “weird sort of monastic” devotion lexicographers give to the English language, and their hallowed approach to the daily challenges of providing the public with an up-to-date dictionary, lends itself to a work space that demands people speak in whispers and celebrate their lexical triumphs with silent fist pumps. How else, Stamper asks, could a lexicographer be expected to determine the difference between the words measly, small, and teensy?

"There’s nothing worse than being just a syllable’s length away from the perfect, Platonic ideal of the definition for “measly,” being able to see it crouching in the shadows of your mind, only to have it skitter away when your co-worker begins a long and loud conversation that touches on the new coffee filters, his colonoscopy, and the chances that the Sox will go all the way this year."

Colonoscopies are just the beginning of Stamper’s comedic contributions. She blends sophistication with humor at every turn, making the act of reading about dictionaries an absolute delight. Stamper was drawn to the life of a lexicographer, she asserts, recounting an incident when she embarrassed her daughter in public:

“Are you taking pictures for work again?”
“Just one.”
“Oh my God,” [my daughter] moaned, “can you ever just, like, live like a normal person?”
“Hey, I didn’t choose the dictionary life – ”
“Just stop – ”
“ – the dictionary life – ”
“MOM –”
“ – chose me,” I finished, and she threw her head back and sighed in exasperation.

Many of Stamper’s amusing asides are delivered as footnotes, such as her reaction to the 1721 edition of Nathaniel Bailey’s An [sic] Universal Etymological English Dictionary, whose subtitle goes on for another two hundred and twenty-two words and garners Stamper’s facetious remark: "They sure don’t title dictionaries like they used to."

facetious \ fuh-see-shuh s \ adj: 1: not meant to be taken seriously or literally 2: amusing; humorous 3: lacking serious intent; concerned with something nonessential, amusing, or frivolous.

It stands to reason that a person who specializes in defining words would demonstrate an exemplary understanding of the English language, and Stamper more than proves herself a talented wordsmith. Her use of ten-dollar words is employed in a friendly manner. Some words are defined in the footnotes, while others remain undefined and will, fittingly, send many readers running to the dictionary. While the procedure for compiling defined words into a viable resource is fascinating, Word by Word would not be as entertaining were it not infused with Stamper’s snarky personality.

The work of a lexicographer, however, requires that the person – rather, the lexicographer’s personality – be removed from the equation. “You must set aside your own linguistic and lexical prejudices about what makes a word worthy, beautiful, or right, to tell the truth about language,” Stamper explains, because writing definitions isn’t about making hard and fast rules for a word – as so many people are inclined to think – but rather, it’s an act of recording how words are being used in speech and, more importantly, in publications.

The common misperception that lexicographers are the definitive authority on the English language – whose definitions and pronunciations of words are akin to law ordained by divine beings – has resulted in more than a few letters being sent by confused or outraged individuals to Merriam-Webster’s physical and digital inboxes. Perhaps the most compelling example of this concerns the 2003 release of the Eleventh Collegiate dictionary in which the word “marriage” was redefined to include the sub-sense (a secondary meaning of a word): "the state of being united to a person of the same sex in a relationship like that of a traditional marriage." This new sub-sense was added because in the late 1990’s, when revisions to the Collegiate Dictionary began, the issue of same-sex marriage was widely debated, prevalent not just in speech but also in nearly every major news publication.

Six years after its publication, one person noticed the new sub-sense in the Eleventh Collegiate dictionary’s definition of “marriage,” took offense to it, and launched a fiery write-in campaign that inundated Stamper’s inbox with hundreds of complaints and accusations against Merriam-Webster, along with numerous threats to harm Stamper. These angry letter-writers maintained a strident adherence to the misconception that lexicographers somehow shape language, culture, and religion. Further, they failed to understand that the very act of writing about gay marriage (regardless of the vehemence they assigned to the idea of same-sex couples being legally wed) worked to create citational evidence of the word “marriage” being widely used in relation to gay couples. In other words, the efforts made by the appalled letter-writers indirectly worked to validate that the word “marriage” had, in fact, been due for a revisal of its definition to encompass its many usages.

From dealing with irate letter-writers to spending months teasing out the proper definition of overly complicated words like “is” or “a,” the work of a lexicographer is thankless. Lexicographers don’t have their names assigned to the dictionaries on which they work tirelessly. And the English language, fluid in nature and ever changing, never stops demanding that dedicated word connoisseurs hunch over their desks and puzzle out the most effective definition to encapsulate a words new usage.

"When the dictionary finally hits the market, there is no grand party or celebration. (Too loud, too social.) We’re already working on the next update to that dictionary, because language has moved on. There will never be a break. A dictionary is out of date the minute that it’s done."

Word by Word is a sublime romp through the secret life of dictionaries; a guaranteed rapturous read for word lovers, grammar fanatics, and linguists.

55 people found this helpful

Manuel Fernandes

Great insights into dictionary making

Reviewed in India on 17 August 2018

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'Word by Word: The secret life of dictionaries' by Kory Stamper, who spent almost two decades writing dictionaries at Merriam Webster, is a must-read for all those interested in the English language; and those who are not, read it anyway, you just might get interested. Drawing from her extensive experience, Ms. Stamper takes you in a highly entertaining manner through the process of defining words. The 300-page paperback covers all the serious stuff like the eight parts of speech (POS, “which also stands for 'piece of shit'”, she says), pronunciation, spelling, small words, bad words, wrong words, and the rest lucidly and with rare humour. Talking of MW's need for native English speakers as lexicographers, she says, “You need to know without being told that 'the cat are yowling' is not grammatically correct whereas 'the crowd are loving it' is just very British.” I am loving the book.

7 people found this helpful

Carol Denehy

Disappointing 12th

Reviewed in Australia on 1 September 2023

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On the one hand, this book is exactly as presented, describing the behind the scenes working of a large and respected dictionary manufacturer. However, this reader is trained in linguistics and how to analyze English speech. We understand more completely the history, origin, pressures and stresses, and influences that language is subject to. I doubt that a linguist would agonise over a phrase from one source trying the analyze part of speech for a particular word. There is also the issue of “idiolect,” or the version of English spoken by a single individual, which really can’t be taken as a legitimate example for the language as a whole. There are millions of dialects that must be taken into account. For example, I grew up in NYC, spent my higher education in the Southern USA, and my work life in Ohio. Each dialect rubbed off on my English and an idiom from one place would be warped into a later production. I found this book sometimes a tempest in a teapot, and missing the point completely. Read it as one untutored language user trying to make sense of a very complex subject using obsolete rules and guidelines.

SagitaYeah

¡¡¡Divulgación lingüística, por favor!!!

Reviewed in Spain on 14 May 2017

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La autora consigue explicar los entresijos de cómo se hacen los diccionarios con humor y transmitiendo la emoción que ella siente en el día a día de su trabajo.
Imprescindible para todos los estudiantes de Lenguas Aplicadas, Filología y Lingüística.
Lanzo una propuesta a los lexicógrafos expertos: ¡anímense a compartir con los maestros, profesores, curiosos, etc. lo que ustedes saben hacer!

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