Wordorigins.org

"I like to say that dictionaries are the vodka of literature. We take the wheat and the rye and the potatoes; we take really meaty things and we make it into something that’s odorless, colorless, tasteless, but really powerful. And it goes great with Red Bull.”

Erin McKean, editor-in-chief of US dictionaries at Oxford University Press (and my editor for Word Myths) gives an engaging talk on dictionaries and lexicography.