Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries

by Kory Stamper

While Chancery Standard was spreading throughout the realm in the form of books and printed pamphlets, trying its level best to regularize English spelling, English itself was growing like gangbusters. In the sixteenth century, English was established as a language of record; now it was time to make it a fully literary language. The problem was that plenty of England’s best writers thought English wasn’t quite up to the task. This wasn’t anything new: complaints about the fitness of English have practically been a national pastime since at least the twelfth century, and if the written record were more complete, I’m sure we’d find scrawled in the corner of some Old English manuscript a complaint that English is horrible and Latin is way better. John Skelton wrote a poem that most likely dates to the early sixteenth century in which he claims that “our naturall tong is rude” and really not up to the task of poetry, and he was the damned poet laureate of England. If English was going to be a literary language, it had a lot of work to do.

*7 English has a lot of synonyms for “fool” or “idiot.” Perhaps you take this to mean that English speakers are mean-spirited; I simply reply that necessity is the mother of invention.

As I mentioned earlier, editorial correspondence is one of the duties of the Merriam-Webster lexicographer. It’s considered a service to our users: anyone can write to the company and ask any question at all about the English language and get a response from an expert. Allow me to generously shower that statement with caveats. Editorial correspondence is indeed one of many duties that Merriam-Webster editors have to take on; that said, it is one of the lesser duties that can be set aside when the deadlines are not just looming but have begun climbing the building and pawing around inside for hostages. We call it the “press of editorial duties” in our correspondence; for a while, there was a physical Press of Editorial Duties in Gil’s office, an old letterpress brought up from the depths of basement storage. Maybe it strikes you as a tired joke, but we are lexicographers, and tired jokes are our forte. The press of editorial duties is real.