The good people at OUPblog asked me to pinch hit for Ben Zimmer yesterday. The very thought of living up to a real live lexicographer sent me into a paroxysm of fear, so I punted, to mix bad sports metaphors, and sent them an interview I did recently with author Ammon Shea.

I had planned to run it in Errata, but Ammon's most recent book is about reading the OED, all 21,730 pages of it, which he did last year. That heroic effort seemed ideally suited to an OUPblog post, so that's where it went. I got the book itself the other day, and will post specifically about it closer to its August publication date.

This is the first of what I hope will become a regular feature: the Errata "Legends of Lexicography" interview series.

Labels: Ammon Shea, dictionaries, legends of lexicography, lexicography, OED

The Oxford University Press, in the role of Country Music Television (or perhaps TLC), has crowned their Miss America: this year's Word of the Year is locavore. Or as mollusque would have it, proxivore.

Here's where I finally get to take a Walt Winchell (or perhaps Matt Drudge) turn: a few WotY contenders (though not the winner) made a brief appearance on Wordie last week, courtesy of... well, I won't say, but they came from on high, and were promptly removed.

That's right, lexicographic dish! Oh, I would die happy if this became the Page Six of the lexicographic world. Quixotic, maybe, but a boy can dream.

Labels: lexicography, locavore, OUP