Kory Stamper - Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries

L anguage is one of the few common experiences humanity has. Not all of us can walk; not all of us can sing; not all of us like pickles. But we all have an inborn desire to communicate why we cant walk or sing or stomach pickles. To do that, we use our language, a vast index of words and their meanings weve acquired, like linguistic hoarders, throughout our lives. We eventually come to a place where we can look another person in the eye and say, or write, or sign, I dont do pickles.

The problem comes when the other person responds, What do you mean by do, exactly?

What do you mean? Its probable that humanity has been defining in one way or another since we first showed up on the scene. We see it in children today as they acquire their native language: it begins with someones explaining the universe around them to a rubbery blob of drooling baby, then progresses to that blob understanding the connection between the sound coming out of Mamas or Papas mouthcupand the thing Mama or Papa is pointing to. Watching the connection happen is like watching nuclear fission in miniature: there is a flash behind the eyes, a bunch of synapses all firing at once, and then a lot of frantic pointing and data collection. The baby points; an obliging adult responds with the word that represents that object. And so we begin to define.

As we grow, we grind words into finer grist. We learn to pair the word cat with meow; we learn that lions and leopards are also called cats, though they have as much in common with your long-haired Persian house cat as a teddy bear has with a grizzly bear. We set up a little mental index card that lists all the things that come to mind when someone says the word cat, and then when we learn that in parts of Ireland bad weather is called cat, our eyes widen and we start stapling little slips of addenda to that card.

At heart, we are always looking for that one statement that captures the ineffable, universal catness represented by the word cat, the thing that encompasses the lion cat and the domestic-lazybones cat and the bad weather in Ireland, too. And so we turn to the one place where that statement is most likely to be found: the dictionary.

We read the definitions given there with little thought about how they actually make it onto the page. Yet every part of a dictionary definition is crafted by a person sitting in an office, their eyes squeezed shut as they consider how best to describe, concisely and accurately, that weather meaning of the word cat. These people expend enormous amounts of mental energy, day in and day out, to find just the right words to describe ineffable, wringing every word out of their sodden brains in the hopes that the perfect words will drip to the desk. They must ignore the puddle of useless words accumulating around their feet and seeping into their shoes.

In the process of learning how to write a dictionary, lexicographers must face the Escher-esque logic of English and its speakers. What appears to be a straightforward word ends up being a linguistic fun house of doors that open into air and staircases that lead to nowhere. Peoples deeply held convictions about language catch at your ankles; your own prejudices are the millstone around your neck. You toil onward with steady plodding, losing yourself to everything but the goal of capturing and documenting this language. Up is down, and the smallest words will be your downfall. Youd rather do nothing else.

We approach this raucous language the same way we approach our dictionary: word by word.