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A review by daumari
Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries by Kory Stamper
5.0
A wonderful look into the world of lexicography, or crafting and compiling the words and definitions that comprise a dictionary (and other relevant features such as first usage origin, pronunciations, etc.) Stamper describes her job as constant reading, searching for possible new senses or examples of existing ones as citations, and that sounds like a dream job (teasing out the finer points of the verb forms of take: less so).
I've been prescriptivist in the past, but I'm coming round to the descriptive position- that dictionaries, etc. are here to log usage of a living language, not necessarily what the "right" version is (which is why irregardless, ain't, and other words have a place in the dictionary- because people use them).
I've been prescriptivist in the past, but I'm coming round to the descriptive position- that dictionaries, etc. are here to log usage of a living language, not necessarily what the "right" version is (which is why irregardless, ain't, and other words have a place in the dictionary- because people use them).