The (Previous) Week in Dictionary Evangelism

Possibly doesn't count as outright evangelism -- perhaps it's merely evangelism-adjacent -- but this week's Boston Globe column is on Hulkspeak in Hulktweets.

Thesaurus evangelism: Wordnik launches a new thesaurus, with a really cool word-comparison-shopping feature (dreamed up & implemented by my awesome co-workers, with special props to Kumanan and John).

There's a new ODE out! It includes vuvuzela, only a month after the end of the World Cup! (And only two months after it showed up in Wordnik, as discovered by Language Log commenters.) That must have taken a little bit of last-minute page finagling. 

Comments

[Nick]

Is there a reason that you are abbreviated the Oxford English Dictionary as ODE as opposed to OED?

[Erin]

Because it's actually the Oxford Dictionary of English, not the OED, that updated in a new edition. I linked to that article as a joke, sorry -- everyone gets it wrong! Very frustrating.

[Holly Lavecchia]

Erin/(Mrs./Ms./ Miss) McKean/totally badass word chick/however you choose to be identified,

Someone gifted me with a clip of you speaking at a 2007 TED conference and my sensibilities were rocked. That the dictionary does not have to be a strict, authoritative "set" of values that control and limit the English language is AMAZING AND REVOLUTIONARY.

As someone who has always been a word-enthusiast, I am so inspired. I have a question: how does one become a lexicographer? I want to learn things about words and the nature of how we use them that I never even imagined, and am clueless about how to make my future take that shape. I would be so grateful if you could point me in a direction as I'm about to graduate college and it's something I'm lacking pretty pathetically.

Thanks so much for the revitalized lust for language,
Holly

[Dicios]

Very useful thesaurus, thank you.