When Ammon Shea set out on his great safari, his great odyssey, it wasn’t to the plains of Serengeti or the peak of Everest. Ammon Shea set out to conquer the Oxford English Dictionary — to read, in one year, all 21,730 pages.
At 137 pounds, the Oxford English Dictionary spans twenty volumes and 59 million words — with two and a half million quotations illuminating the deepest vaults of the English language.
At 155 pounds, our slender guest today, Ammon Shea, read every last one of them — nearly his weight in OED entries. That’s like reading a John Grisham novel a day for a year. And, says Shea, every bit as page turning.
Feeling “onomatomania”? Vexation at not finding the right word? He’s got you covered. Need a word for the place on your back you can’t reach to scratch? He’s got that too.
This hour, we’re reading the OED with author Ammon Shea, sailing far and wide on the ocean of the English language.
Have you plumbed the depths of the great dictionary behemoth? Or do you just dust off the dictionary to win at Scrabble? Do you know your acnestis from your petrichor? Join the conversation.
-Tom Ashbrook
Guests:
Ammon Shea joins us from New York. He’s the author of “Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, and 21,730 Pages” and co-author, with Peter Novobatzky, of two previous books on obscure words, “Depraved English” and “Insulting English.” He read his first dictionary, Merriam Webster’s Second International, ten years ago, and followed it up with the sequel, Webster’s Third International. Ammon has worked as a street musician in Paris, a gondolier in San Diego, and a furniture mover in New York City.
And joining us from New York is Jesse Sheidlower, editor at large of the Oxford English Dictionary. For the Third Edition of the OED, he has revised the words American, Big Apple, Indian, jazz, not!, prep, pretzel, punk, railroad, rap, Republican, and thousands of others. He’s author of “The F Word,” an exhaustive history of one of English’s most used words. From 1996 to 1999, he wrote a language column called “Jesse’s Word of the Day.”
More links:
Excerpt: “Reading the OED”
The Oxford University Press blog offers this excerpt from the book and an interview with Ammon Shea.
Oxford English Dictionary
The OED’s official site offers more about the dictionary, its history, and its ongoing revision program. And don’t miss the Word of the Day.
Tags: dictionaries, language
Finifugal: shunning the end (Such as at bedtime, or that of a particularly good book) [http://wordie.org/words/finifugal]
What does Ammon think of acronyms that are common vernacular but might not enter the dictionary?
I expect “laser” (Light Ampplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation) to be in the dictionary but maybe not NATO?
Scuba? SQL pronounced “sequel”, Interpol?
Thanks,
Posted by Tim, on August 19th, 2008 at 11:25 am EDT~tim
I’ve heard that dictionaries have fake entries as a way to track when their pages have been copied in-whole.
Did your guest come across any of these entries? or is this story apocryphal?
Posted by Keith Gabryelski, on August 19th, 2008 at 11:25 am EDTI was impressed by reading John Adams letters to his wife at each’s wide range of vocabulary and especially when most people were not formally taught nor had a reason to use such words ( on the farm ).
“Do you know your acnestis from your petrichor? ”
For the current high school/college students there is no need to get that esoteric. From a show that I enjoyed on CBC news – there was this quote:
“A few months ago, I had occasion to ride down six floors in an elevator with seven or eight new federal government officers. I would estimate their ages to have been between 22 and 24 years. Bearing in mind that these individuals were required to have degrees in post secondary education, the conversations between them were absolutely incredible. I heard the word “like” at least 50 times. I don’t believe I heard a single word beyond three syllables. It was as if I was listening to a group of 12-year-olds.”
I seriously doubt that 99% of the current young generation would use a dictionary, nevermind BUY one( unless it is for a report that might be graded by someone who DOES know how to spell.)
Posted by Bob, on August 19th, 2008 at 11:29 am EDTGuest:
Please enunciate and speak clearly as you rattle off these obscure words you are attempting teach us.
Thanks team, you guys are superb.
Steve
Posted by Stephen Phillips, on August 19th, 2008 at 11:47 am EDTI adore this program. I just purchased the author’s book for my Kindle so I can begin reading at once.Would he recommend a dictionary(affordable)for home use and enjoyment?
Posted by Kathleen Tuttle, on August 19th, 2008 at 11:52 am EDTKathleen
as a follow on to acronyms, what about IM/text speak? (”LOL” “ROFL” “BRB” “OMG” etc.) and brand names that become used as verbs (google, facebook, twitter, etc.)?
Posted by karentl, on August 19th, 2008 at 11:54 am EDTI am as much interested in word meaning as I am in pronunciation. I find it interesting that the word erudite, which has 3 syllables, is consistently pronounced as if it contained 4: er-ya-dite vs. er-ee-you-dite. I heard the host and guests pronounce it as if it had 4 syllables. Why is that?
Posted by Brian, on August 19th, 2008 at 11:55 am EDThi tom and thank you amom and jesse. i’m wondering if you all could comment on the influence of the surgeon of crowthorn, dr wm. chester minor and his contributions from broadmoor asylum, berkshire, england.
Posted by pepper greene, on August 19th, 2008 at 11:55 am EDTGiven that language is changing so rapidly, and popular culture seems to be contributing to the demise of standard English as a common parlance, I mourn the loss of our expansive and expressive language. Will English continue to be be the lingua franca of politics and diplomacy, culture and education, on an international basis? Will the forthcoming edition of the O.E.D. be relegated to The Rosetta Project as part of the archive of how we once communicated orally in daily life? For a stark example of where inner city language is headed, one has only to view the documentary film “The Boys of Baraka” (2005), filmed in Baltimore and at an alternative school in Kenya. The inner city portions were subtitled in English, so that one could understand what was being said.
Language must evolve. I applaud the work of the editors and compilers of the next edition of the O.E.D. But it has to be more than an archive. Both a print edition and an online resource would be ideal. And I hope against hope that the spoken word will not descend to a series of monosylabic utterances.
Posted by John T, on August 19th, 2008 at 12:09 pm EDTWill English continue to be be the lingua franca of politics and diplomacy, culture and education, on an international basis?
Of course most lingua francas are pidgins anyway. It’s not clear to me that the English used by most international verbal transactions is anymore than a subset of that which educated native English speakers use.
You refer to English being the “lingua franca of politics and diplomacy” but the term lingua franca is more often applied to ordinary communication in trade and other common exchanges between people of different languages – diplomats are assumed to already be fluent in the appropriate language.
For a stark example of where inner city language is headed, one has only to view the documentary film “The Boys of Baraka” (2005), filmed in Baltimore and at an alternative school in Kenya. The inner city portions were subtitled in English, so that one could understand what was being said.
Unfortunately for African Americans, it’s considered racist to even raise this concern. For generations immigrants have come to the US and while the first generation might struggle with English, by the second generation the kids are speaking English well enough to start climbing the ladder of success. The African American community is the only example of a population where the younger generations speak English more poorly than their parents! The effect on their prospects is predictable.
Posted by Peter Nelson, on August 27th, 2008 at 6:06 pm EDT