The Great Passage is a 2016 one-season anime about Genbu Shobo, a major publishing company, and a young man who takes over a dictionary project from a veteran lexicographer. For anyone whose interests overlap at anime and dictionaries, its premise...
Susie Dent’s murder mystery Guilty by Definition (Bookshop|Amazon) follows a lexicographer in Oxford who becomes a sleuth of a different kind, seeking the culprit in a long-unsolved killing. A lexicographer herself, Dent includes lots of obscure and...
Many so-called “rules” of grammar are actually just zombie rules. They’re ill-advised attempts by 17th-century grammarians to make English syntax fit the orderly rules of Latin. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...
Samuel Butler once likened definitions to a kind of scratching. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “A Kind of Scratching” The English writer Samuel Butler once wrote, Definitions are a kind of scratching and generally...
Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries, by Merriam-Webster lexicographer Kory Stamper, is a must-read for anyone interested in language and how dictionaries are made. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “A Great Book by a...
This week: Do you ever find yourself less-than-specific about your age? Listeners share some of their favorite phrases for fudging that number, like: “Oh, I’m 29, plus shipping and handling.” Also in this episode: • Since ancient...
