Coming up on Word Matters, a philosophical analysis of the dictionary.
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 Neil Servin, Amin Shea, Peter Sakalowski,
and I explore some aspect of the English language from the dictionary's vantage point.
This might seem like a strange position for a dictionary podcast to take, but...
There's no such thing as the dictionary.
I don't mean that the imposing tome that sat resolutely on the shelf in your childhood home was a figment.
What I mean is there's no such thing as the dictionary.
You can't see it, but I'm doing air quotes.
In reality, there are a great many dictionaries of which Merriam-Webster publishes some.
Here's Amon Shea on an all too common misconception.
Listeners sometimes like to get what they think is inside information about the dictionary.
Important topics like, how does a word get into the dictionary?
Do words leave the dictionary?
Things like that.
But there is other kinds of, I think,
privileged information that it's useful for you, the non-lexicographic listeners we have to know.
And among such tidbits as we can offer, perhaps the most valuable,
is if you ever want to really annoy a lexicographer, And let's be honest, who among us does not?