Last weekend my sister Emily sent us all a link to a little radio interview. That’s her in the interview, don’t you know. My sister. My sister Emily.
I listened to it right away. And then I listened again. And again a few more times. It’s a great interview: it’s humorous, and witty, and at the same time explains to the listener just how they put together new editions of the dictionary.
The dictionary is descriptive, you know, not prescriptive. You’ll need a grammar text to tell you how to use “lay” and “lie” correctly; you’ll need your grandmother to tell you which words Not To Use. The task of the dictionary is to lay it all out there (lay it, not lie it) and tell you how it’s done.
But how do they do it? one wonders. How do they gather all the unruly bits of our living language and get it into one volume?
Well, they hire people like Emily, for starters. Click on the link, Reader, and scroll down to where you see the picture of the magnifying glass over a page from the dictionary. Right where it says Bad Ass: (n) Emily Brewster. That’s my sister.
And yes, for the record, I am proud. Very.
The idea of “timeless English” is sheer nonsense. No living language can be timeless. You might as well ask for a motionless river. — C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer
