Fiat Lex: A Dictionary Podcast

The hosts discuss editing online dictionaries, including new word additions. They also share book recommendations for the holiday season. The podcast includes bonus features and mentions a ca. 1996 website called Dictionaraoke.

New word updates (like the one that American Heritage just announced!) are super sexy, but the real work that goes into your shiny new dictionary is invisible. Today, Steve and Kory take you down the meandering, Lovecraftian rabbithole of print copyright updates, when we disappear dictionary content that no one loves to make room for "twerk" and "baconnaise." What makes a new dictionary a copyright update versus a new edition? How can you tell? What gets the axe? What utter horrors can you discretely fix while you're in there? What if your discrete fix which saves us that precious, precious space utterly fubars your style sheet? And what happens when one small change in an entry means you have to suddenly fix another 82 entries? You think you still want this job? We will do our level best to dissuade you! BONUS FEATURES!   - Future Kory makes a much-needed appearance!   - Steve provides all editors a handy tip should they ever lose their coat-check ticket.   - "Demurely" and "kittenish," zomg. - Mispronunciation Index: none that we caught, though I'm sure, gentle listener, you will ferret them out and report them to the appropriate authorities.

Part two of our excellent interview with lexicographer, language expert, tailor/tinker/soldier and spy, Jesse Sheidlower. We continue our discussion about The F-Word and the f-word; touch on slang dictionaries; talk about verisimilitude in movie or TV dialogue and Jesse's work as a language consultant for the Amazon series "The Man in The High Castle"; geek out about every lexicographer's favorite movie (and gab about the verbing of "meet-cute"), and wrap-up with a segue to "Heathers." Jesse brings us home with some vintage "Mean Girls." THIS EPISODE CONTAINS EXPLICIT LANGUAGE. I MEAN. THE BOOK IS CALLED "THE F-WORD." BONUS FEATURES:    - Two of the three lexicographers in the room have IMDB pages!   - The swearing in "Deadwood" was not historically accurate. COME AT ME, AL SWEARENGEN.  - What's the English word for "the jealousy one feels when one learns another person has not shared in a terrible yet common experience"? No, seriously, we're asking, because Steve has never seen "Titanic."   - The Great Passage. Just read it.   - Mispronunciation Index: Steve biffed "manga" and Kory mangled "Hemingway," but Jesse pronounced everything perfectly. A+ for Jesse.   

Steve and Kory have a special treat this week: the first half of our interview with lexicographer, author, bon vivant, raconteur, and damn fine human being Jesse Sheidlower. He talks about how he was sucked into the gaping maw of lexicography by Lord Byron's "tool," inadvertently became the hero of a novel set at Random House, wrote this little book called The F Word that resulted in the accidental utterance of said f-word on NPR and the constant-forever debunking of "Fornication Under Consent of the King," and told Steve Martin that all us word nerds adored his "Disgruntled Former Lexicographer" essay in The New Yorker. This episode features cusswords, in the event that a book called The F Word didn't give that away. BONUS FEATURES: - Jesse's words to live by: "Anytime someone says to you that something's from an acronym, if you say 'No, it's not,' you'll be right 100% of the time."  - NPR voice, now with extra vocal fry!  - Why too much grad school is bad for you. (Drop out NOW.)  - Kory asks Jesse The Worst Question Ever and is appropriately called out for it.  - Mispronunciation Index: NONE, because Jesse and his gorgeous pronunciation of "roman à clef" is here to save us all. 

all·sorts ('ôl-ˌsôrts) noun plural : a mixture of assorted confections (such as licorice); often used figuratively Today's episode is an assortment of colorful treats that, like licorice allsorts, stick unpleasantly to your teeth and coat your tongue with a weird film! In a figurative way. Steve and Kory dig into the mailbag and answer YOUR QUESTIONS about crowdsourced dictionaries, reading rooms, raisins, the plum brandies of central Europe, multilingual dictionaries they love, and lung diseases. BONUS FEATURES: - Steve and Kory went on the tee-vee and you can watch the fruits of their lexicographical labors here. - SPACE GHOST guest appearances (sort of). - Learn how to say "Merry Christmas" in Yiddish!  - Mispronunciation Index: none that we caught, but do let us know how very wrong we are!

If you've been listening to this podcast, you know that mistakes happen. In the case of this particular podcast, they happen often! And they happen in dictionaries, too. We hope you were sitting down when we told you that. This episode is alllllll about mistakes. Steve and Kory issue corrigenda/errata for earlier episodes (and Kory can't figure out the difference between "corrigenda" and "errata"), then take you through the byzantine processes by which dictionary errors are discovered and corrected. It involves paleography! Kory talks about the biggest boner (sense 2) to appear in a Merriam-Webster dictionary; Steve tells us about the time when he had to find all the lowercase c's which had been mysteriously converted to small capped lowercase c's. And they give you handy tips on how to tell a dictionary company that you found an error without being an absolute unit of jerkery. BONUS FEATURES! - Steve talks more IPA, and we ain't talkin' beer. - Steve and Kory reminisce about the glories of blue proofs. - "Banks and banks and banks and banks" is the new "stacks on stacks on stacks on stacks."  - Stamper Mispronunciation Index: "corrigenda," but she's blaming FIVE YEARS OF LATIN on that one. Also, Steve says "a error" completely naturally and it is beautiful.

What kind of a person writes dictionaries for a living? It helps to have what Steve calls "an early awareness of language." It's Old Home Fortnight at Fiat Lex, where Steve and Kory talk about growing up around other languages, studying German and Czech during the fall of Communism, which dictionaries they grew up with (Random House '66 REPRESENT), and why it took Steve decades to learn the English word for "wooden spoon." While wandering through the highways and byways of language, we also touch on the minutiae of preparing for a career in lexicography, then promptly crush the dreams of hopeful lexicographers everywhere. BONUS FEATURES: - "Whom! WHOOOMMM!" -  "Máte ústřední topění!" - Steve and Kory talk about what horribly inappropriate things they read as tender and impressionable youth, which explains a lot of this podcast.  - Stamper Mispronunciation Index: none, though Kory makes a "much" for "many" mistake, so don't bother writing in to tell her. And yeah, she knows her Finnish is terrible. 

Think you might be good at this lexicography racket? This episode will change your mind--or, at least, it should if you had any sense whatsoever. A good chunk of the job is mastering some of the most mundane publishing details imaginable, and that includes the subject of today's episode: the dots in the mid·dle of the head·words in your dic·tion·ary (or dic·tion·ar·y, depending on which of the damned things you're using). Steve and Kory discuss what those dots are and why they matter; Steve goes full nerdcore while dropping some head-smackingly obvious etymology; and Kory shares a major discovery which will alter the very fabric of lexicography as we know it!1  1 Not really, but it sure is fun to think such a thing is both possible and interesting enough to merit an exclamation point. BONUS FEATURES: - What the hell is that weird logo we use on Twitter? Steve has all the answers and they involve the word "fricative." - Kory pretends to sing and it only sounds a little bit like a kazoo rendition of Penderecki's Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima. - Sick of political arguments? Here's a point-counterpoint you can invest in. - Mispronunciation Index: NONE, ABSOLUTELY NONE. Not even the one that Kory assumed was an error.

Lexicographers discuss the challenges of defining hard words. They explore the complexities of words with multiple meanings and borrowed from other languages. The hosts delve into the process of defining words for a dictionary and share humorous anecdotes. They also discuss the challenges of defining towns, regions, and the word 'God'.

Lots of people use dictionaries not for the definitions--who cares about those?--but for the pronunciations. Steve and Kory talk about how those pronunciations came to be, and why the pronunciation editor gets to watch TV all day instead of getting a REAL JOB. They explain what that stupid bananapants alphabet that American dictionaries use for pronunciations is, drop some hot history on how pronunciations got into dictionaries, and go very inside-baseball on how editors figure out which pronunciations to include when they get stuck. Kory talks about Walter Cronkite and lingerie; Steve talks about flaps. And if that wasn't enough, did you know that dictionaries enter the "noo-KYOO-lur" pronunciation of "nuclear"? They sure as shootin' do! BONUS FEATURES: - Arthur the Rat!  - Tattoos! (Steve's, not Kory's) - The dankest of nerd memes - Stamper Mispronunciation Index: 1 intentional, 1 unintentional, 1 disputed