Book Review: Reading the OED

1 January 2009

Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21730 Pages; Ammon Shea; New York: Penguin Group (USA); $21.95.

Ammon Shea, a former furniture mover in New York City, spent a year reading the 20 volumes of the 2nd edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. This book is a combination of memoir of the experience and a recounting of the interesting words Shea encounters on his travels from A to zyxt.

Now, I take as much delight in encountering a strange or euphonious word as the next logophile, but lists of “interesting” and “neat” words leave me cold. Maybe it’s because no two people have the same reaction to a word and I just disagree with the compiler about what’s interesting, maybe the thrill is in the encounter and seeing a word etherized and dissected on a table is cold and clinical, or maybe I just don’t appreciate words that are never actually used—as most words in such lists are, but I just don’t “get” the appeal of such books. Reading the OED, however, is different. This one is a gem.

The difference is in the memoir of the experience and in Shea’s commentary on the words he encounters. Reading the entire OED cover to cover (20 times) is not something a perfectly sane person would do. Shea portrays himself as a misanthropic curmudgeon. The only hint of humanity in the man that the reader gets is the knowledge that his long-suffering, lexicographer girlfriend Alix loves him, so he can’t be all bad. Now, I don’t know Shea and he may be a perfectly delightful person in real life (I suspect he is), but the character who prowls the stacks in the sunless basement of the Hunter College library, wired on caffeine and shhhing talkative college students who disturb his reading, is fun to read about. As an example, Shea’s reaction on thinking he has finished the mammoth project:

After I finished dancing my jig I sat there and debated whether or not I wanted to read the bibliography. I told myself that it is not really part of the dictionary […] That night over dinner I told Alix that I was finished reading. She asked, “How was the bibliography?”

I replied in as offhand a way as I could manage that I’d decided not to read it. She gave me that steady look that is so quietly indicative of disapproval and after a moment said, “You are going to say you read the whole OED and you are not going to read the bibliography?” The next day I began reading again.

In addition to the vicarious experience of reading the OED, the reader is treated to Shea’s commentary on many of the words in the dictionary. Shea provides the words, his own definitions—often of a secondary or tertiary sense—and usually some wry and snide observations to go along with them:

Pertolerate (v.) To endure steadfastly to the end.

I am of the opinion that the word tolerate should be used to describe life’s everyday banalities. Pertolerate, on the other hand, as it refers to seeing something through to the bitter end, should be reserved for describing enduring something that is particularly grueling and tiresome, such as musical theater, or performances of any sort by children not your own. also see: sitzfleisch.

Or this one:

Assy (adj.) “Asinine” (OED)

It is infinitely comforting to find that within the hallowed pages of this monumental work of scholarship, some lexicographer saw fit to insert at least one truly memorable four-letter word.

Anyone who enjoys words, and this means pretty much anyone who is reading this, will thoroughly enjoy Reading the OED. I strongly recommend picking up a copy from your local bookstore or library. With 26 short chapters, one for each letter, it is well-suited for reading in snatches during a commute or while waiting for the dentist and can easily be polished off in an afternoon of steady reading. Unlike the project it depicts, Reading the OED does not require a year of sustained effort. It’s well worth it.

Words of the Year: 2008

28 December 2008

Here at Wordorigins.org we don’t select a single term as “word of the year,” but rather we provide a list of terms that were representative of the past year. Here is the selection for 2008:

age-doping, n., the falsification of an athlete’s birth records to meet a sporting event’s age requirements, as alleged of Chinese gymnasts in the 2008 Olympics.

bailout, n. & v., rescue of a failing business by the government, esp. the government payments to the banking and financial industry in late 2008.

Barack Obama nonce terms. Any of the cutesy terms of limited lifespan created as a play on Barack Obama’s name. Examples: Baracknophobia, Barackapolis (the Greek-temple-like backdrop to Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic convention), Barackstar, Obamamama, Obamarama, Obamania.

Blagosphere, n. Optimistic worldview of a failing politician. After Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich and blogosphere.

Caribou Barbie, prop. n. Derisive nickname for Sarah Palin.

change, n. Political buzzword of vague and ever-shifting meaning.

credit crunch, n. Scarcity of capital for lending.

concierge care, n. Personalized medical care available from certain medical practices for a high price.

credit default swap, n. Insurance policy for debt, so-called to avoid having to abide by regulations on the insurance industry.

fail, n. From the verb. Failure. Primarily used online.

haircut, get/take a, catchphrase. To accept a reduction in equity, pay, or benefits in order to keep one’s company or industry afloat.

hockey mom, n. Mother who is invests time and emotions in her child’s interest in hockey. Cf. soccer mom.

Joe the _____, prop. n. An everyman. Example: Joe the Plumber.

maverick, n. A politician who takes pride in his or her independence from party discipline.

nuke the fridge, catchphrase. To ruin a successful movie franchise through cheesy gimmicks and howlingly implausible plot points; a reference to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which contains a scene where the hero survives a nuclear blast by hiding in a refrigerator. Cf. jump the shark.

plutoid, n. A trans-Neptunian dwarf planet. Coined by the International Astronomical Union to refer to objects like Pluto after taking away Pluto’s planetary status.

PUMA, abbrev. Acronym for Party Unity My Ass. A disaffected Hillary Clinton supporter who refused to vote for Obama. Possibly also influenced by cougar, a slang term for an older woman who has sex with younger men.

securitization, n. The turning of debt (or anything else) into financial instruments that can be sold on the market.

shovel-ready, adj. An infrastructure project that can be started immediately and used as a timely economic stimulus.

tank, in the, catchphrase. Denotes support for a political candidate. Connotes that said support is the result of a backroom deal or is not publicly acknowledged.

team of rivals, n. Political administration populated by the president’s political opponents. After historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s 2005 book of that title about Lincoln’s administration and applied to Obama’s in 2008.

terrorist fist jab, n. Fist bump. Used by Republican-supporting journalists after Barack and Michelle Obama bumped fists on stage at an event.

toxic asset, n. Financial instrument that no one wants to own.

Thanks to Grant Barrett, Wayne Glowka, and Ben Zimmer. Many of these terms were taken from their lists of nominations for the American Dialect Society Word of the Year. The ADS Word of the Year will be selected on 9 January at the ADS annual meeting in San Francisco.

Book Review: Garner on Language and Writing

19 December 2008

Garner on Language and Writing: Selected Essays and Speeches; Bryan A. Garner; Chicago: American Bar Association, 2008; $59.95.

Bryan Garner is author of Garner’s Modern American Usage and editor of recent editions of Black’s Law Dictionary, as such he is one of the leading experts on style, usage, and writing, especially legal writing. This latest work is a collection of essays, speeches, letters, book reviews and the like on the subject of legal writing. For what it is, it is excellent, but one should not make more of it than what it is; its utility is limited in scope.

First, this is a book about legal writing; it is for lawyers. While there are lessons in it that are useful to any writer (e.g., the importance of clarity and brevity, his essays on Pun Control and Cruel and Unusual English which address effective punning), most of the book is rather specialized and is focused on how to write good legal briefs. Non-lawyers will have to sift through a lot of dross to find the nuggets that are valuable to them. Even his section on English Grammar and Usage, which might have general applicability, is almost exclusively devoted to examples from the legal field. And given the book’s price tag, few non-lawyers will want to pay even a discounted price.

Second, it is a book of essays, not a reference. This is not a style or usage guide like GMAU. That’s not to say you can’t learn a lot from Garner on Language and Writing, just that it is not a quick-reference guide. This book is to be read at leisure and the principles applied generally and over time.

But if you are a lawyer or otherwise engaged in the profession of legal writing, this book is a must-have and it would make an excellent text for a law school course on writing. From effective use of legal jargon, to how to write a brief that will persuade a judge, to how to hold a writing seminar in your firm, Garner’s essays cover the spectrum of legal writing. It’s a book that every law school student should read and every lawyer re-read annually.

Book Review: Damp Squid

17 December 2008

Damp Squid: The English Language Laid Bare; Jeremy Butterfield; Oxford University Press, December 2008; $19.95.

Butterfield’s Damp Squid is an exploration of linguistics and lexicography for the layperson. It’s light and entertaining, but at the same time addresses how professional language researchers go about their business and in so doing explodes some of the misconceptions people have about our language.

If there is a negative criticism of the book it is that it lacks a coherent, overall theme. It has an overall topic, that of explaining what linguists do, but not a theme. But this isn’t too serious a criticism; the book is effective as a potpourri of linguistic information. This value is reinforced by the style of short essays and frequent use of inset boxes, lists, and diagrams that keep the reader’s interest. This is not a book for in-depth examination of the state of English linguistics, but for the casual word lover it is instructive and fun.

The book’s chapters address the following topics, which show the breadth of the subject material that Butterfield is covering:

  • Introduction: an explanation of corpus linguistics

  • Size matters: how many words in the English language?

  • Your Roman-Saxon-Danish-Norman English: etymology

  • Beware of heard: why spelling varies?

  • Which is to be master: the importance of context in meaning

  • Words of a feather: word groupings, what words are found with other words

  • Cats and dogs: idioms

  • Grammar that can govern even kings: what is grammar?

  • Style wars: pet peeves about language

  • Epilogue: a brief historical overview of dictionaries

For the casual word lover or for someone just getting interested in linguistics and language, this is an excellent choice. Those engaged in a more serious pursuit of language study can probably skip it.