Coming up on Word Matters, words that, um, stink.
I'm Emily Brewster and Word Matters is produced by Merriam-Webster in collaboration with New England Public Media.
On each episode, Merriam-Webster editors Amon Shea,
Peter Sakalowski and I explore some aspect of the English language from the dictionary's vantage point.
Sometimes a word over time will take on a meaning that doesn't play very nicely with its original meaning,
leaving a person who knows both meanings unsure what to do.
Is the word still usable or is it skunked?
Ammon is not bemused or is he?
A little bit over a decade ago.
I was in a bookstore in Salt Lake City.
I think it's the Sam Weller bookstore.
It's a really lovely, lovely used bookstore if you ever happen to find yourself in Salt Lake City.
And I found this odd little book,
which was a collection of typed kind of onion skin pages put into a small three ring binder.
I chose it
because at the beginning it said property of Miriam Webster not to be removed from editorial floor.
I don't know who removed it or when, but it ended up in a bookstore thousands of miles away.
It was a kind of odd collection of things that, for whatever reason,
the editors at that time, it looked like it was from the 1940s,
considered important enough that they had some typists working for the company type up various articles or a list of words.