This is a delightful article about words, Merriam-Webster, and Twitter.
Is there a definition for “covfefe”?
What follows are many other instances where Merriam-Webster became the go-to site.
“When Kellyanne Conway spouted her Orwellian term of art, “alternative fact,” for example, Merriam-Webster was there with the definition of an actual fact. When United Airlines insisted that the man who was forcibly dragged off an overbooked flight was a “volunteer,” Merriam-Webster tweeted the definition of that term. (As one might expect, a volunteer is “someone who does something without being forced to do it.”) When Ivanka Trump offered an invented meaning for “complicit” — and when searches for that word spiked after a Saturday Night Live sketch called her exactly that — Merriam-Webster was there, dutifully noting the public’s interest and reporting on the word’s official definition.”
The interview in the article with the editor of M-W is also a pleasurable respite from the soul-deadening political news of the day.
Here is my favorite exchange:
Q. “Was there a conscious decision made about what the tone of the Twitter would be? Did the election affect that?
A. “Yes, absolutely. Honestly, they’re coincidences. About a year and a half ago, our editor of digital publishing, Lisa Schneider, she basically said — she’d been working for the company for a while, and she said, I’ve met so many of the editors and the people who write the dictionary definitions, and I find them to be really lively and funny. And yet, the social media presence was pretty tame. Boring, frankly. It could be wallpaper after a time, if it’s just the word of the day. So she basically said: I want to make an effort to make the personality that I see behind the scenes to the fore.
“So she hired a wonderful writer, someone with a lot of knowledge about literature — so not someone from the world of social media, but someone from the world of word nerds, someone who loves reading and has a good sense of appropriateness of language, and good wit and wisdom, too. They found Lauren Naturale, and that became a full-time job. Her mission was clear: Let’s make this personality come through.”
[Note: my serious claim to fame is that I am cited in the Tenth Edition as the source of the phrase “umbrella organization.” I blush. It was in common usage before I wrote it. In Texas, we used to pronounce “umbrella” as “umber-ella.” ]
That, happily, is not noted.
Once the autocrat billioanres realize what MW is doing, they will attempt to buy MW and then as its new owner/s corrupt it to their bidding.
Obviously you’ve lived long enough to see and understand how it works Lloyd. Spot on!!
“dumbrella organization”: an association of organizations working toward a common dumb cause. ( See PARCC, DFER, “The 74” and AFC)
SDP, that’s a good one! You belong in MW.
Thanks for that link, Diane. Excellent article on language usage. MW certainly exhibits a “fidelity to truth” in their work!
I’d say they exhibit a “fidelity to language”, which need not be the same as fidelity to truth.
Sometimes the same word can have more than one meaning, which makes it impossible to say how the person who used it intended it.
In some cases (eg, “alternative facts”) there is no ambiguity but in other cases (“alternative interpretations”) there is.
someone from the world of word nerds, someone who loves reading and has a good sense of appropriateness of language, and good wit and wisdom, too.
A good description of the owner of this blog.
My mom used to “wrench” the dishes, rather than rinse them. She was woefully under-educated, never graduated high school (born in 1925/died in 2000) but very well read on current events. I used to tease her about that word but the roots go deep; her mother used to wrench the dishes too. Diane, perhaps there is a fondness for you in the word umber-ellas that you can never outgrow.
“Dumber-ellas”
Stupid fellas
And dumber ellas
Really are the norm
Rampant “errors”
And other terrors
Rife with school “Reform”
So true.
My Texan grandparents used “umber-ellas”, too. Must be a regionalism.
It is a great publishing company, and I use its products heavily in my teaching practice.