He Took on the Burkini Dictionary Entry Just for Fun

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Stefan Fatsis is a former sports reporter for the Wall Street Journal.

And you may remember his earlier book, Word Freak,

Which is about diving into the world of competitive Scrabble.

A few years later, at age 43,

He actually trained to become a place kicker with the Denver Broncos.

And the result was his book called A Few Seconds of Panic, which is pretty understandable.

Well, he’s also passionate about dictionaries, so you probably won’t be surprised to learn

That he managed to get himself embedded as a lexicographer in training for a while

At America’s most famous dictionary company, Merriam-Webster.

And while he was there, he struggled to write definitions and revise older ones

And make the case for new words that he thought should be added.

And he describes all this and lots more in a lively new book called

Unabridged, The Thrill of and Threat to the Modern Dictionary.

It’s a comprehensive history of dictionaries, particularly in the United States.

And of course, that covers a lot of ground from Noah Webster

All the way to current controversies over what gets in and what stays out,

How words are defined, and disputes over sensitive usage and slurs and pronouns.

And the book is really a love letter to dictionaries in general and to the work of lexicographers

In particular. And Grant, you and I have always said that sports writers are often among the best

Writers at newspapers, and I can tell you that Unabridged is a very writerly book. He brings you

Along as he describes, for example, the wonder of pulling open a drawer of citations at the

Merriam-Webster offices and seeing what he calls the sweep of history on little paper rectangles.

And you get a sense of the nerdy thrills that he got from contributing new definitions for words like

Burkini and alt-right and microaggression. And it’s also interesting to read about words that

He tried to get into the dictionary but couldn’t. So this book is also about the future of dictionaries

And their place in the culture. And of course, as you know so well, Grant, that’s somewhat in doubt,

Especially in the age of the internet and AI. We’ve talked about that a lot.

Yeah, I was interviewed by Stephan for the book because I was at dictionary.com at the time,

And dictionary.com was bought out and so went through some various transitions for that. But

Merriam-Webster is kind of the last mainstream dictionary publisher standing. So it’s a real

Difficult time for dictionary publishing. And Stefan addresses that in his book with,

You know, charm and taste and a little bit of humor.

Yeah. I mean, we think of dictionaries as sort of these cultural icons, but as he points out in the

Book, they’re also businesses and they’re in some trouble.

Yeah, they certainly are. And he definitely approaches the sweep of it with the magazine

Writer’s eye so that it’s not too far down into the weeds. And I think that anybody who

Appreciates the dictionary as a cultural artifact will enjoy this book.

Right. It’s called Unabridged, the Thrill of and Threat to the Modern Dictionary by Stefan Fatsis.

We’ll have a link to that book on our website. And of course, if you have questions about how

Dictionaries are made, I’m more than willing to answer. You can reach me at words@waywordradio.org.

And if you have language questions in general, you can talk to us on the telephone call or text

Toll-free in the United States and Canada, 877-929-9673.