Redefining the dictionary Erin McKean

now I have any of y’all ever looked up

this word you know in a dictionary but

yeah that’s what I thought um how about

this word

you know I’ll show it to you

lexicography the practice of compiling

dictionaries known as we’re very

specific that word compile the

dictionary is not carved out of a piece

of granite out of a lump of rock it’s

made up of lots of little bits little

discrete that spelled D is CR e te bits

and those bits are words now one of the

perks of being a lexicographer besides

getting to come to Ted is that you get

to say really fun words like

lexicographical lexicographical has this

great pattern is called a double dactyl

and by just by saying double dactyl I’ve

sent the geek needle all the way into

the red

but lexicographical is the same pattern

as higgledy-piggledy right it’s a fun

word to say and I get to say it a lot

now one of the non perks of being a

lexicographer is that people don’t

usually have a kind of warm fuzzy

snuggly image of the dictionary right

nobody hugs their dictionaries but what

people really often think about the

dictionary is they think more like this

just to let you know I do not have a

lexicographical whistle but people think

that my job is to let the good words

make that difficult left-hand turn into

the dictionary and keep the bad words

out but the thing is I don’t want to be

a traffic cop for one thing I just do

not do uniforms and for another deciding

what words are good and what words are

bad is actually not very easy and it’s

not very fun and when part of your job

are not easy or fun you kind of look for

an excuse not to do them so if I had to

think of some kind of occupation as a

metaphor for my work I would much rather

be a fisherman I want to throw my big

net into the deep blue ocean of English

and see what marvelous creatures I can

drag up from the bottom but why do

people want me to direct traffic when I

would much rather go fishing well

I blame the Queen well why do I blame

the Queen well first of all I blame the

Queen because it’s funny but secondly I

blame the Queen because dictionaries

have really not changed our idea of what

a dictionary is has not changed since

her reign the only thing that Queen

Victoria would not be abused by in

modern dictionaries is our inclusion of

the f-word which has happened in

American Dictionary since 1965 so

there’s this guy right Victorian era

James Murray first after the Oxford

English Dictionary I do not have that

hat I wish I had that hat so he’s really

responsible for a lot of what we

consider modern in dictionaries today

when a guy who looks like that in that

hat is the face of modernity you have a

problem and so James Murray could get a

job on any dictionary today there would

be virtually no learning curve and of

course people are saying okay Computers

Computers what about computers the thing

about computers is I love computers I

mean I’m a huge geek I love computers I

would go on a hunger strike before I let

them take away google book search from

me but computers don’t do much else

other than speed up the process of

compiling dictionaries they don’t change

the end result because what a dictionary

is is it’s Victorian design merged with

a little bit of modern propulsion its

steampunk what we have is an electric

velocipede you know we have Victorian

design with an engine on it that’s all

the design has not changed and okay what

about online dictionaries right online

dictionaries must be different this is

the Oxford English Dictionary online one

of the best online dictionaries this is

my favorite word by the way erinaceus

pertaining to the hedgehog family of the

nature of a hedgehog very useful word

so look at that

online dictionaries right now our paper

thrown up on a screen this is flat look

how many links there are in the actual

entry - right

those little buttons I have them all

expanded except for the date chart so

there’s not very much going on here

there’s not a lot of click enos and in

fact online dictionaries replicate

almost all the problems of print

except for search ability and when you

improve search ability you actually take

away the one advantage of print which is

serendipity serendipity is when you find

things you weren’t looking for because

finding what you are looking for is so

damn difficult now when you think about

this what we have here is a hand but

problem does everybody know the hand but

problem woman’s making a hand for a big

family dinner she goes to cut the butt

off the hammer throw it away and she

looked at this piece of ham she’s like

this was a perfectly good piece of ham

why am i throwing this away stop well my

mom always did this so she calls it mom

and she says mom why’d you cut the butt

off the hand when you’re making a ham

she says I don’t know my mom always did

it so they called grandma my grandma

says my pan was too small

so it’s not that we have good words and

bad words we have a pan that’s too small

you know that ham but is delicious

there’s no reason to throw it away the

bad words see when people think about a

place and they don’t find a place on the

map they think this map sucks when they

find a nice spot or a bar and it’s not

the guidebook they’re like ooh this must

place must be cool it’s not in the

guidebook when they find a word that’s

not in the dictionary they think this

must be a bad word why it’s more likely

to be a bad dictionary why are you

blaming the ham for being too big for

the pan so you can’t get a smaller ham

the English language is as big as it is

so if you have a ham but problem and

you’re thinking about the hand but

problem the conclusion that it leads you

to is inexorable and counterintuitive

paper is the enemy of words how can this

be I mean I love books I really love

books some of my best friends are books

but

the book is not the best shape for the

dictionary they’re like oh my people are

going to take away my my my beautiful

paper dictionaries no there will still

be paper dictionaries when we had cars

when cars became the dominant mode of

transportation

we didn’t round up all the horses and

shoot them you know there’s still going

to be paper dictionaries but it’s not

going to be the dominant cake dictionary

the book-shaped dictionaries not going

to be the only shape dictionaries come

in and it’s not going to be the

prototype for the shapes dictionaries

come in so think about it this way if

you have an artificial constraint

artificial constraints lead to arbitrary

distinctions and a skewed worldview

what if biologists could only study

animals that made people go oh right

what if we made aesthetic judgments

about animals and only the ones we

thought were cute were the ones that we

could study we know a whole lot about

charismatic megafauna and not very much

about much else and I think this is a

problem I think we should study all the

words because when you think about words

you can make beautiful expressions from

very humble parts lexicography is really

more about material science we are

studying the tolerances of the materials

that you use to build the structure of

your expression your speeches and your

writing and then often people say to me

well okay how do I know that this word

is real that I think okay if we think

words are the tools that we use to build

the expressions of our thoughts how can

you say that screwdrivers are better

than hammers how can you say that a

sledgehammer is better than a ball-peen

hammer

they’re just the right tool for the job

and some people say to me how do I know

if a word is real you know anybody who’s

read a children’s book knows that love

makes things real if you love a word use

it that makes it real being in the

dictionary is an artificial

it doesn’t make a word any more real

than any other real any other way if you

love a word it becomes real so if we’re

not worrying about directing traffic if

we’ve transcended paper if we are

worrying less about control and more

about description then we can think of

the English language as being this

beautiful mobile and any time one of

those little parts of the mobile changes

is touched anytime you touch a word you

use it in a new context you give it a

new connotation you verb it you make the

mobile move you didn’t break it it’s

just in a new position and that new

position can be just as beautiful now if

you’re no longer a traffic cop the

problem with being a traffic cop is that

there can only be so many traffic cops

in any one intersection or the cars get

confused right but if your goal is no

longer to direct the traffic but maybe

to count the cars that go by then more

eyeballs are better you can ask for help

if you ask for help

you get more done and we really need

help

Library of Congress 17 million books of

which half are in English if only one

out of every 10 of those books had a

word that’s not in the dictionary in it

that would be equivalent to more than

two unabridged dictionaries and I find

an undeclared word like a word like on

dictionary for example in almost every

book I read what about newspapers

newspaper archive goes back to 1759

fifty-eight point 1 million newspaper

pages if only one in 100 of those pages

had an undeclared word on it it would be

an entire other OAD that’s a more than

500 thousand more words so that’s that’s

a lot I don’t really been talking about

magazines I’m not talking about blogs

and I find more new words on Boing Boing

in a given week than I do in newsmaker

time there’s a lot going on there and

I’m not even talking about pol SME which

is the greedy habit some words have of

taking more than one meaning for

themselves

so if you think of the word set a set

can be a Badgers burrow a set can be one

of the pleats and an Elizabethan rough

and there’s one number definition in the

OED the OED has 33 different numbered

definitions for set tiny little word 33

numbered definitions one of them is just

labeled miscellaneous technical senses

you know do you know what that says to

me that says to me it was Friday

afternoon and somebody wanted to go down

the pub that’s a lexicographical cop-out

to say miscellaneous technical senses so

we have all these words and we really

need help and the thing is we can we can

ask for help ask you for helps not that

hard I mean lexicography is not rocket

science

see I just gave you a lot of words and a

lot of numbers and this is more of a

visual explanation if we think of the

dictionary as being the map of the

English language these bright spots are

what we know about and the dark spots

are where we are in the dark if that was

the map of all the words in American

English we don’t know very much and we

don’t even know the shape of the

language if this was the dictionary if

this with the map of American English

look we have a kind of lumpy idea of

Florida but there’s no California we’re

missing California from American English

we just don’t know enough and we don’t

even know that we’re missing California

we don’t even see that there’s a gap on

the map so I’m again lexicography is not

rocket science but even if it were

rocket science is being done by

dedicated amateurs these days you know

it can’t be that hard to find some words

so now scientists in other disciplines

are really asking people to help and

they’re doing a good job of it for

instance there’s eBird where amateur

bird watchers can upload information

about their bird sightings and then

ornithologist can go and to help track

populations migrations etc and there’s

this guy Mike Oates my Coates lives in

the UK he’s a director of an

electroplating company he’s found more

than 140 comets he’s got so many comets

they named a comment after him it’s kind

of out past Mars it’s a hike I don’t

think he’s getting his picture taken

there any time soon but he found 104

Komets without a telescope he downloaded

data from the NASA Soho satellite and

that’s how he found them we can find

comments without a telescope shouldn’t

we be able to find words now y’all know

where I’m going with this because I’m

going to the internet which is where

everybody goes and the Internet is great

for collecting words because the

Internet’s full of collectors and this

is a little-known technological fact

about the internet but the Internet is

actually made up of words and enthusiasm

and words and enthusiasm actually

happened to be the recipe for

lexicography isn’t that great

so the problem there are a lot of good

word collecting sites out there now but

the problem with some of them is that

they’re not scientific enough they show

the word but they don’t show any context

where did it came from who said it what

newspaper was it in what book because a

word is like an archaeological artifact

if you don’t know the provenance or the

source of the artifact it’s not science

it’s a pretty thing to look at so a word

without its source is like a cut flower

you know it’s pretty to look out for a

while but then it dies it dies too fast

so this whole time I’ve been saying the

dictionary though a dictionary the

dictionary not a dictionary or

dictionaries and that’s because well

people use the dictionary to stand for

the whole language they use it cynically

and one of the problems of knowing a

word like Sanok Dhaka Kelly is that you

really want an excuse to say Sanok

topically and so this whole talk has

just been an excuse to get me to the

point where I could say syntactically to

all of you so I’m really sorry but when

you use a part of something like the

dictionary is a part of the language or

a flag stands for the United States it’s

a symbol of the country then you’re

using it cynically but thing is we could

make the dictionary the whole language

if we get a bigger pan then we can put

all the words in we can put in all the

meanings doesn’t everybody want more

meaning in their lives

and we can make the dictionary not just

be a symbol of a language we can make it

be the whole language and you see what

I’m really hoping for is that my son who

turns seven this month I want him to

barely remember that this is the form

factor that dictionaries used to come in

this is what dictionaries used to look

like I want him to think of this kind of

dictionary as an 8-track tape it’s a

format that died because it wasn’t

useful enough it wasn’t really what

people needed and the thing is if we can

put in all the words no longer have that

artificial distinction between good and

bad we can really describe the language

like scientists we could leave the

aesthetic judgments to the writers and

the speakers if we can do that then I

can spend all my time fishing and I

don’t have to be a traffic cop anymore

thank you very much for your kind

attention