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