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" Twitter is like overhearing people's conversations, which is exactly what dictionary editors have been wishing we could do for years. "
Erin McKean
Years
Like
People
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" Most consumers don't have a good metric for deciding on whether the dictionary they want to use is a good one... so they flip the book over, then go to the back, and it says, 'Over 250,000 entries.' And they go, 'Great, this dictionary must be awesome!' "
Erin McKean
Want
Awesome
Great
" What I'm interested in is how people are reading and writing English. "
Erin McKean
People
Writing
English
" Twitter has already birthed an entire ecosystem of other sites that extend its power or interact with it. But Twitter isn't just a platform for technological innovation: It's showing signs as an engine of creativity for the language, too. "
Erin McKean
Power
Language
Innovation
" Objections to verbification in English tend to be motivated by personal taste, not clarity. Verbed words are usually easily understood. When a word like 'friend' is declared not a verb, the problem isn't that it's confusing; it's that the protester finds it deeply annoying. "
Erin McKean
Taste
Friend
Problem
" All language is a popularity contest. "
Erin McKean
Popularity
Contest
Language
" There are hundreds of thousands of words that aren't in any print dictionary today... because there's no space for all of them. "
Erin McKean
Space
Dictionary
Because
" Writers who hedge their use of unfamiliar, infrequent, or informal words with 'I know that's not a real word,' hoping to distance themselves from criticism, run the risk of creating doubt where perhaps none would have naturally arisen. "
Erin McKean
Run
Know
Criticism
" We think people go to a dictionary to find out what a word means. Most people go to the dictionary because they don't want to look stupid. "
Erin McKean
Stupid
Think
Want
" Part of the joy and pleasure of English is its boundless creativity: I can describe a new machine as bicyclish, I can say that I'm vitamining myself to stave off a cold, I can complain that someone is the smilingest person I've ever seen, and I can decide, out of the blue, that 'fetch' is now the word I want to use to mean 'cool.' "
Erin McKean
Say
Blue
Joy
" It's difficult to choose a Word of the Year in the year that you're in. It's one of those things that hindsight makes more apparent. It's like looking at pictures from 10 years ago, and you notice the flannel and the ripped jeans. At the time, it didn't look to you like a real fashion trend. "
Erin McKean
Looking
Real
Time
" Words take on many different meanings. "
Erin McKean
Meanings
Words
Different
" Language is a nice way to remember things. "
Erin McKean
Language
Nice
Things
" If you say 'anti-aging,' how anti would it have to be, really? My guess is not much. Any amount of sunscreen could be considered anti-aging. "
Erin McKean
Much
How
Say
" Uniforms are intended to make the wearer look as strong as possible. Soldiers could fight in leotards, but that's never going to happen because leotards aren't intimidating. "
Erin McKean
Soldiers
Fight
Look
" Almost any word can be drafted to serve as a verb, even words we think of as eternal and unchanging, stuck in their more traditional roles. "
Erin McKean
More
Think
Stuck
" There are very few good ways to get publicity for a dictionary. "
Erin McKean
Ways
Dictionary
Good
" People say jargon is a bad thing, but it's really a shortcut vocabulary professionals use to understand one another. "
Erin McKean
Bad
Understand
Say
" We've been using 'rejuvenate,' meaning to restore youth, to make young again, as a verb for at least 200 years. "
Erin McKean
Young
Meaning
Again
" All words have life cycles. "
Erin McKean
Life
Words
Cycles
" For me, conferences are like little mental vacations: a chance to go visit an interesting place for a couple of days, and come back rested and refreshed with new ideas and perspectives. "
Erin McKean
Ideas
Interesting
Me
" Ideally my goal is, before I die, to have some information about every word that's ever been used in print. "
Erin McKean
Goal
Used
Before
" I think we would all like to believe that every new event demands a new word. But we're environmentally conscious with our words. We recycle words we've got. "
Erin McKean
Believe
Think
New
" If words are doing their job, then their novelty will not be the most noticeable thing about them. "
Erin McKean
Words
Will
Job