Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries

by Kory Stamper

You are then handed a sheaf of paper and asked to edit the definitions found on it, all of them having been taken from earlier Merriam-Webster dictionaries. You get another such worksheet for where to enter phrases, another one that asks you to fix the capitalization of older entries, and another that asks you to fix the inflected forms of older entries. This is existentially unnerving, because these definitions are taken from published dictionaries, which means they were written by people who had more training and practice than you do. It is your memento moron: no matter how smart and excellent, remember that you, too, will fuck up.

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