full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Erin McKean: The joy of lexicography

Unscramble the Blue Letters


And I find an un-dictionaried word — a word like "un-dictionaried," for example — in almost every book I read. What about newspapers? Newspaper acvhrie goes back to 1759, 58.1 million nwpeseapr pages. If only one in 100 of those pages had an un-dictionaried word on it, it would be an entire other OED. That's 500,000 more words. So that's a lot. And I'm not even talking about magazines. I'm not talking about blgos — and I find more new words on BoingBoing in a given week than I do nseewewk or Time. There's a lot going on there.

And I'm not even talking about polysemy, which is the grdeey habit some words have of taking more than one meinnag for themselves. So if you think of the word "set," a set can be a badger's burrow, a set can be one of the pleats in an Elizabethan ruff, and there's one numbered doefitinin in the OED. The OED has 33 different nrbuemed definitions for set. Tiny, little word, 33 numbered definitions. One of them is just llabeed "miscellaneous technical senses." Do you know what that says to me? That says to me, it was Friday aronofetn and somebody wanted to go down the pub. (Laughter) That's a lexicographical cop out, to say, "miscellaneous technical senses."

Open Cloze


And I find an un-dictionaried word — a word like "un-dictionaried," for example — in almost every book I read. What about newspapers? Newspaper _______ goes back to 1759, 58.1 million _________ pages. If only one in 100 of those pages had an un-dictionaried word on it, it would be an entire other OED. That's 500,000 more words. So that's a lot. And I'm not even talking about magazines. I'm not talking about _____ — and I find more new words on BoingBoing in a given week than I do ________ or Time. There's a lot going on there.

And I'm not even talking about polysemy, which is the ______ habit some words have of taking more than one _______ for themselves. So if you think of the word "set," a set can be a badger's burrow, a set can be one of the pleats in an Elizabethan ruff, and there's one numbered __________ in the OED. The OED has 33 different ________ definitions for set. Tiny, little word, 33 numbered definitions. One of them is just _______ "miscellaneous technical senses." Do you know what that says to me? That says to me, it was Friday _________ and somebody wanted to go down the pub. (Laughter) That's a lexicographical cop out, to say, "miscellaneous technical senses."

Solution


  1. meaning
  2. labeled
  3. afternoon
  4. archive
  5. greedy
  6. blogs
  7. numbered
  8. newspaper
  9. newsweek
  10. definition

Original Text


And I find an un-dictionaried word — a word like "un-dictionaried," for example — in almost every book I read. What about newspapers? Newspaper archive goes back to 1759, 58.1 million newspaper pages. If only one in 100 of those pages had an un-dictionaried word on it, it would be an entire other OED. That's 500,000 more words. So that's a lot. And I'm not even talking about magazines. I'm not talking about blogs — and I find more new words on BoingBoing in a given week than I do Newsweek or Time. There's a lot going on there.

And I'm not even talking about polysemy, which is the greedy habit some words have of taking more than one meaning for themselves. So if you think of the word "set," a set can be a badger's burrow, a set can be one of the pleats in an Elizabethan ruff, and there's one numbered definition in the OED. The OED has 33 different numbered definitions for set. Tiny, little word, 33 numbered definitions. One of them is just labeled "miscellaneous technical senses." Do you know what that says to me? That says to me, it was Friday afternoon and somebody wanted to go down the pub. (Laughter) That's a lexicographical cop out, to say, "miscellaneous technical senses."

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
ham butt 5
traffic cop 4
online dictionaries 4
bad words 3
rocket science 3
compiling dictionaries 2
good words 2
oxford english 2
english dictionary 2
love computers 2
victorian design 2
english language 2
love books 2
aesthetic judgments 2
artificial distinction 2
numbered definitions 2
american english 2
missing california 2
mike oates 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
oxford english dictionary 2

Important Words


  1. afternoon
  2. archive
  3. blogs
  4. boingboing
  5. book
  6. burrow
  7. cop
  8. definition
  9. definitions
  10. elizabethan
  11. entire
  12. find
  13. friday
  14. greedy
  15. habit
  16. labeled
  17. laughter
  18. lexicographical
  19. lot
  20. magazines
  21. meaning
  22. million
  23. newspaper
  24. newspapers
  25. newsweek
  26. numbered
  27. oed
  28. pages
  29. pleats
  30. polysemy
  31. pub
  32. read
  33. ruff
  34. senses
  35. set
  36. talking
  37. technical
  38. time
  39. tiny
  40. wanted
  41. week
  42. word
  43. words