Wordorigins.org

LEXICO’GRAPHER. n.s. A writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and signification of words.
—Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language, 1755

I included this quote in the last newsletter as part of the announcement of the change of the blog/newsletter name from A Way With Words to The Harmless Drudge. The new name is, of course, taken from Johnson’s famed dictionary definition.

But a reader wrote back complaining about the use of that in the definition, and Samuel Johnson or not, this was just plain incorrect. It should be, she said, who busies himself.

29 Aug: Separated by a Common Language has a nice article about the differences in British and American clothing names.

A pretty amazing site for those interested in prepositions, but its not for the faint of heart (WARNING: Heavy Linguistic Content). The site characterizes 673 senses of 334 English prepositions. If you’ve ever been tempted to create your own dictionary, a look at this site and the workload required to do lexicography right will almost certainly dissuade you.

24 Aug: More on how words are selected for inclusion in “the” dictionary by Erin McKean of The Dictionary Evangelist.

24 Aug: Joey DiGuglielmo, editor of the Washington Blade, has an interesting article on use of these terms and, more generally, on how newspapers use style guides. Some interesting insights into how PC language is used in the journalistic trenches.