Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries

by Kory Stamper

The Transitizer, as some of us call it, is a pink with a sentence on it and a hole cut out where the verb of the sentence is so you can lay the card over your problem verb and read the resulting sentence to see if that verb is, in fact, transitive. The Transitizer reads, “I’ma ______ ya ass.” I’ma bend ya ass (to Webster’s will). There you go: this sense of “bend” must be transitive.

“Lay” is used with a stated object (“lay the book on the table”) and “lie” is used without a stated object (“I’m going to lie down on the sofa”);

Humanity sets up rules to govern English, but English rolls onward, a juggernaut crushing all in its path.*7

Standard English as it is presented by grammarians and pedants is a dialect that is based on a mostly fictional, static, and Platonic ideal of usage.

Who thought that “pumpernickel” was a good name for a dark rye bread? Because when you trace the word back to its German origins, you find it means “fart goblin,”*5