{"id":39801,"date":"2018-03-15T14:04:41","date_gmt":"2018-03-15T21:04:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/?p=39801"},"modified":"2018-03-15T14:04:41","modified_gmt":"2018-03-15T21:04:41","slug":"kory-stamper-would-like-a-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/kory-stamper-would-like-a-word\/","title":{"rendered":"Kory Stamper Would Like a Word"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Kory Stamper is a lexicographer who worked for nearly two decades at Merriam-Webster dictionary, a world she reveals in the new book, Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries. She will be speaking about the book at her upcoming Town Hall event on Sunday, March 25th. In the meantime, Town Hall\u2019s Jonathan Shipley spoke with her about her love of language, the lexical merits of emojis, and the wonderfully weird word that is \u2018gardyloo.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

Get tickets for Kory’s upcoming event on 3\/25.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\nhttps:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/townhallseattle\/180315_KoryStamperInterview.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

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You\u2019re a lexicographer. For the common person, what is that?
\n<\/strong>A lexicographer is a writer and editor of dictionaries.<\/p>\n

Have you always had an interest in words and writing and reading?
\n<\/strong> I always loved reading but really in high school I started loving individual words\u2014the way that individual words sounded, or what they meant, or how they could be deployed.<\/p>\n

Anytime I told people what I did for a living I was bombarded with questions and assumptions about what the job was and lots of assumptions about what English was that just aren\u2019t true.<\/p>\n

I started blogging about language and then decided to write this book as a behind-the-scenes of how dictionaries are made but also to give people some kind of entry point into what English actually is. As a dictionary writer, you often hear from people who think English is dying and they complain that English is falling by the way side, and kids these days and so forth.<\/p>\n

Texting and emojis\u2026<\/strong>
\nExactly. Soon we\u2019re all going to devolve into gestures and grunts. But the reality is that all of things actually enrich English. English is such a resilient and wild and beautiful language. I wanted to write the book as a love letter to this oft-maligned language that is actually really inventive and beautiful.<\/p>\n

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Got a favorite word? How about least favorite? Editor at Merriam-Webster Kory Stamper joins us Sunday, March 25th with new #book “Word by Word”. Town Hall’s very own Jonathan Shipley spoke with Stamper recently. Tap the link in bio to read the full interview.<\/a><\/p>\n

A post shared by Town Hall Seattle<\/a> (@townhall_seattle) on