Welcome to Fiat Lex, a podcast about dictionaries by people who write them! Yes, really.

Meet Kory and Steve, your intrepid and nerdy lexicographer-hosts who will give you the drudge's-eye view of English and dictionaries in all their weirdness. In our first episode, we:

- blow your minds by telling you that "the dictionary" doesn't exist;

- talk about how new words get into dictionaries (not by petition, so STOP ASKING) and how that's not as straightforward a process as you would think;

- explain how lexicographers find new words, which sometimes involves beer and diapers;

- touch on how words get taken out of dictionaries, and how that's not as straightforward a process as you would think, either. Assuming you think about such things. (Who are we kidding here?)

BONUS FEATURES!

- Kory spells a word aloud correctly, which will probs never happen again;

- Steve channels Chumley the Walrus and then goes right into fancy linguist talk about velars and coronals;

- Tennessee represents!

TRANSCRIPT BELOW

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Steve:   Hi, I'm Steve Kleinedler

Kory:     and I'm Kory Stamper.

Steve:   Welcome to Fiat Lex,

Kory:     a podcast about dictionaries by people who write dictionaries.

Steve:   We're so glad you're here listening to us talk about this. So we've been thinking about doing this for while.

Kory:     Yeah, and we just want to give you a little intro. What's the whole point of doing a podcast about dictionaries? Well, dictionaries have lots of interesting information in them and everyone uses them.

Steve:   And who are we, you might be wondering? Why should you be listening to us as opposed to anyone who has a concrete thought about anything under the sun? Kory and I have both worked on a dictionaries for several years. I was on staff with the American Heritage Dictionary for over 20 years,

Kory:     and I was on the staff of the Merriam-Webster dictionaries for over 20 years. Gosh, we've probably got 50 years of editing experience between us.

Steve:   Yeah. Especially if you count all the stuff we did beforehand. I worked on a lot of dictionaries for a company that was called National Textbook Company that has since had been eaten and subsumed by other media conglomerates. They might be part of Tronc now for all I know.

Kory:     TRONNNC

Steve:   The Tribune group. And my background is I have a degree in linguistics. I took a lexicography course at Northwestern and I started getting freelance work from my professor after I graduated, and one thing led to another, as they say.

Kory:     And I have no degree in linguistics. I have a degree in medieval studies and I fell into this job-- literally, almost tripped on a newspaper which had the want-ad for the Merriam Webster position.

Steve:   Well, medieval studies though, are hugely important in this field from the standpoint of etymology or just understanding how words work.

Kory:     Yeah, that's true. There are a lot of medievalists in dictionary companies. We could run our own Ren Faire.

Steve:   Yes. And that ties in also--we have both written books. I have written a English textbook called "Is English changing?" published by Routledge and the Linguistic Society of America,

Kory:     And I have written a not-textbook, regular-book, called "Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries," which is out in paperback this year.

Steve:   And in that book you can find out how Kory literally tripped over a newspaper and ended up in the position that she did.

Kory:     So to speak. All right, so again, dictionaries. What are they? Why are they? Who uses them? Who cares?

Steve:   Everyone uses them to some extent, whether-- Even though people may not use print ones as much as people used to, certainly people look up words all the time, whether they enter terminology into a search bar or look it up in print. That content comes from somewhere.

Kory:     And we are the people who write that content. One of the questions we get all the time and we thought would be a great question to address today in our inaugural podcast, is how words get into the dictionaries that you use

Steve:   and how they get out of them.

Kory:     Yes. Yeah. Let's talk about--let's talk about how words move in and out.

Steve:   Well, it's important to note that some people-- you hear people refer to "The Dictionary" as if there were only one in one authority, kind of like the Bible--which is also laughable because there's multiple versions of the Bible as well. Dictionaries are still in the process of being written, compiled, dictionary entries are being drafted, edited, written, and existing ones change over time.

Kory:     Yeah. And not only do they change, but different dictionaries serve different purposes. So different definitions are going to look different depending on who the audience is, who's--which companies writing those dictionaries. You know, Steve and I wrote for different dictionary companies though everyone assumes that we wrote "The Dictionary."

Steve:   Everyone also assumes that we're constantly at war.

Kory:     We're not, we're buddies.

Steve:   We are. We're friends.

Kory:     Yay, friends forever!

Steve:   And as Kory mentioned, there are different audiences for dictionaries, not just different companies. So you could, for example--there are several different legal dictionaries out there and they are going to take a more ingrained approach to the legal defining than a general purpose dictionary will. And you will find all sorts of dictionaries. Slang dictionaries, for example.

Kory:     Yep. So, so with that in mind, we'll just talk about general dictionaries, which are dictionaries that we've both worked on. So how do words get into the dictionary?

Steve:   The answer is not whimsy.

Kory:     Sadly. So quit asking me to put your damn word in the dictionary

Steve:   Oh, actually: we're talking about how words don't get put in dictionaries, but a good way to not get a word included in a dictionary is to write to a dictionary company and say, "Hey, I invented this word," or "I think we should add this word." Even if you are a third grader who writes a very cute, plaintive letter. Sorry, but that's not how it works.

Kory:     Those are the worst letters, too, because we have to write back and say "no,: which is, you know...I mean.

Steve:   Who wants to to shatter the dreams of a third grader?

Kory:     Yeah. We are basically just autonomous thesauruses, but we still do have feelings. We don't like hurting other people's feelings. The way that words get in generally is through usage. Not usage as in, like, "I'm writing a dictionary and I've used the word now in print once, and so, enter it," but sort of sustained and widespread usage. And, generally, written usage, which is kind of a bugbear, but that's what we got.

Steve:   It also depends on the kind of word: you know, what realm it is, what category it falls into. Some words--and these are in the vast minority--have a very easy path. So if you are a scientist who has a synthesized a new chemical element, you and your team get to name that, and as long as the governing board approves it, that's the name. And you know what? In it goes, because the people in charge said so. So tennessine, for example, which was synthesized by researchers in several universities in the state of Tennessee, [they] named element 117 that. And uh, there you go. That's all you need.

Kory:     Tennessine?

Steve:   Tennessine.

Kory:     T-e-n-n-e-s-s-i-n-e? How do you spell it?

Steve:   [Chumley the Walrus voice] That's right, Charlie.

Kory:     [laughter] The amazing thing is that I just spelled that aloud, and I can't actually spell aloud.

Steve:   And that was a Chumley the Walrus imitation. I'm dating myself there. [Chumley the Walrus voice] Sorry, Tennessee.

Kory:     Alright, so usage. I said "written usage" and this is a bugbear. But the reason that we use written usage is it's a standard way that we can do it. So why don't we take spoken usage? Because that's actually that's how words get created first, is usually in speech. They usually don't get written down first.

Steve:   The words that are used in the spoken vernacular are completely 100 percent valid. And there are outfits out there that track this type of thing. Corpuses, which are large collections of words. There's some corpuses that compile a written documentation and other ones that compile samples of recorded speech. Dictionaries, however, tend to focus on words that have been written. Generally, but not always, and more so in the past than now. Not just written, but from edited sources.

Kory:     Yeah. Edited, prose sources. So poetry doesn't really count, because you can use a word with a really nonstandard meaning in poetry--or with no meaning in poetry, you can just use it for sound. But the part of the reason that's difficult is because we now have access to more transcripts of spoken English, and the problem with that as a lexicographer is, it's really actually hard to transcribe a word you've never heard before from speech into print. You can misspell it, you can mishear it. You can not understand the context. So. That's one of the reasons why we focus on written, edited English. Though the "edited," even that's kind of going away these days.

Steve:   More and more, you will see references to things in blog posts which aren't always edited, or even, you know, the comment section,