Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries

Summary of Word by Word

1. 1

   The Secret Lives of Dictionary Makers

   

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   Who gets to decide what words mean? Behind every dictionary definition lies a hidden world-a windowless office in Springfield, Massachusetts, where word lovers sit in near-monastic silence, wrestling with language's beautiful chaos. These aren't ivory tower academics or language police; they're ordinary people with coffee-stained desks who spend their days debating whether "irregardless" deserves respect or "literally" can mean figuratively. They're lexicographers, and their work is far stranger and more fascinating than you'd imagine. What makes dictionaries remarkable isn't their authority but their humility-they don't create rules, they simply watch how we use words and write down what they see. Step inside Merriam-Webster's headquarters and you'll find something unexpected: silence. While marketing teams buzz downstairs, the editorial floor remains eerily quiet, populated by people who communicate primarily through email despite sitting ten feet apart. This isn't antisocial behavior-it's professional necessity. Lexicographers need concentration to perform their peculiar work: reading everything from cereal boxes to Supreme Court opinions, marking interesting word usage, and filing away millions of examples for future reference. The job requirements seem deceptively simple-a college degree and native English fluency-but the real qualification is harder to measure. Germans call it "sprachgefuhl," a feeling for language that makes you obsess over the difference between "shimmer" and "glimmer" at dinner parties.

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   The Grammar Myths We Learned in School

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   Most "grammar rules" you learned in school are made-up preferences from long-dead writers. John Dryden invented the prohibition against ending sentences with prepositions in the 1600s because he loved Latin grammar - never mind that English had done this happily for seven hundred years, or that he violated his own rule in personal letters. The parts of speech we use weren't designed for English - they were borrowed from Latin and Greek, languages with completely different structures. English words refuse to stay in their assigned categories. Nouns act like adjectives, adjectives like nouns, and verbs shape-shift constantly. The small, ubiquitous words - "but," "like," "as" - are the real nightmares. Two equally trained experts can analyze the same sentence and reach completely different conclusions. Webster's Third took twelve years with nearly one hundred editors working simultaneously. A dictionary becomes outdated the moment it's published, as new words emerge from technology, pop culture, and social change.

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   When "Irregardless" Taught Me Humility

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   For years, I despised "irregardless" as a double negative marking uneducated speech. Then a Mississippi letter claimed educated speakers used it deliberately for emphasis beyond "regardless." Skeptical, I checked our citation files. The evidence changed everything. The word appeared italicized in formal writing, introduced as "as the old people said," functioning like a conversation-ender. Writers used both forms in close proximity, suggesting deliberate distinction. Early uses from the late 1700s appeared unremarkable. Only by the late 1800s did usage guides suddenly treat it with contempt-hatred tied to its dialectal nature and regional associations. This realization stung. How many words had I dismissed based on prejudice rather than evidence? All words are invented. Shakespeare used double negatives; Austen used "ain't." Modern dictionaries mirror language as actually used, not prescribe how some believe it should be. Through thousands of citations, I became America's foremost "irregardless" apologist-learning that language prejudices often mask social prejudices.

4. Chapter 4

   The Detective Work Behind Every Definition

   Dictionary work isn't glamorous-mostly reading newspapers, novels, journals, even Twilight. Samuel Johnson developed this system in 1755: read widely, underline interesting words, copy passages onto slips filed alphabetically. Modern lexicographers still collect these "citations," but the process has grown exponentially complex. We can't rely on our own knowledge because subtle shifts happen invisibly. "Bored of" is replacing "bored by"; "different than" competes with "different from." These changes matter more linguistically than flashy coinages like "mansplain," yet they're harder to spot. The internet presents new challenges-content changes constantly or disappears entirely. Speech remains the primary way language evolves, creating a blind spot since words are typically spoken for years before being written down. Sixteen-year-old Peaches Monroee's "on fleek" went from a six-second video to ten percent of all Google searches within five months. Modern dictionary companies use corpora-curated collections containing billions of words from newspapers, broadcasts, even soap operas-to track usage with unprecedented precision. Yet even with these tools, the gap between spoken innovation and dictionary documentation remains one of our greatest challenges.

   Chapter 5

   When Words Become Weapons

   Working with words professionally requires clinical detachment-treating all words equally regardless of social status. Yet certain entries still give pause. When I discovered "bitch" wasn't labeled as taboo in our dictionary, I realized how fraught language work truly is. Dating to the first millennium as a term for female dogs, "bitch" acquired its extended meaning around 1400. By 1475, it was applied to men as an insult, feminizing them as lesser. How can one person adequately capture a word's full social meaning? Linguistic reclamation-where marginalized groups repurpose slurs as identity markers-complicates everything. Jo Freeman's 1968 "The BITCH Manifesto" declared "Bitch is Beautiful," attempting transformation into a feminist badge. But reclamation assumes unified communities rather than diverse individuals. Even "queer," often cited as a reclamation success, remains offensive to many older gay people. The nursery rhyme claiming "names will never hurt me" is a lie every child knows. Words leave bodily scars-the twisted mouth, the heat rash of embarrassment, the fist clenching in your chest. Lexicographers strive for objectivity, but language remains deeply, painfully personal.

   Chapter 6

   The Marriage Definition and the Myth of Dictionary Power

   In March 2009, my inbox exploded with hundreds of outraged emails after a conservative news site claimed we'd redefined "marriage" to promote same-sex unions. People who start write-in campaigns fundamentally misunderstand dictionaries. They believe changing the dictionary changes language itself and culture - that we were influencing same-sex marriage's legality through Supreme Court justices who consult dictionaries. Yet studies show justices use dictionaries inconsistently and selectively to support predetermined opinions. In the four major Supreme Court cases on same-sex marriage, dictionary definitions were cited only twice - both in dissent. Stephen Colbert eventually skewered the campaign, joking that since we'd made the change in 2003, he might have been "gay-married and not known it." Though complaints continue, the substance has shifted. Now we receive as many objections that the two subsenses aren't combined into one gender-neutral sense as we do that gay marriage is ruining America. Language always lags behind life, but we lexicographers continue our quiet work of documenting how words actually live.

   Chapter 7

   The Craft We Carry Forward

   Lexicography blends science with craft, requiring linguistic passion and temperament for solitary work-these are people who analyze sentence structure while brushing their teeth and mentally catalog unusual word choices while reading. The Internet transformed dictionaries from static books into dynamic online resources with unlimited space, yet created expectations for comprehensive, free, constantly updated information that strain resources. Commercial pressures and industry contraction challenge the field even as language evolves rapidly. Yet lexicographers remain devoted to meticulous attention to language. We sit in quiet offices, reading and marking and defining, knowing every documented word preserves something. We're not language police-we're witnesses to the beautiful, messy, constantly evolving way humans communicate. In a world obsessed with being right, we've learned humility: to listen more than speak, observe more than judge, document rather than dictate. That's the real lesson-language belongs to everyone who speaks it, and our job is simply to pay attention.

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