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The Allusionist

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A PODCAST ABOUT LANGUAGE
BY HELEN ZALTZMAN

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The Allusionist

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Allusionist 181. Cairns

September 13, 2023 The Allusionist

There's an abiding myth that the landmark dictionaries are the work of one man, in a dusty paper-filled garrett tirelessly working away singlehandedly. But really it took a village: behind every Big Daddy of Lexicography was usually a team of women, keeping the garrett clean, organising the piles of papers, reading through all the citations, doing research, writing definitions, editing, subediting...essentially being lexicographers, without the credit or the pay.

Academic Lindsay Rose Russell, author of Women and Dictionary-Making, talks about the roles of women in lexicography: enabling male lexicographers to get the job done, but also making their own dictionaries, and challenging the very paradigms of dictionaries.

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In episodes Tags etymology, society, culture, words, language, lexicography, lexicon, vocabulary, history, dictionaries, dictionary, Lindsay Rose Russell, women, men, sexism, Merriam-Webster, Noah Webster, Samuel Johnson, James Murray, Jonathon Green, Green’s Dictionary of Slang, work, OED, Oxford English Dictionary, collaboration, wives, daughters, sheds, Ada Murray, Susan Ford, Jessie Craigie, William Craigie, John Florio, Mary Evelyn, John Evelyn, Robert Cawdry, Table Alphabeticall, labour, attribution, citation, hair, Fop Dictionary, feminism, feminists, feminist dictionaries, publishing, books, Gretchen McCulloch, amanuensis, geniculate

Allusionist 7: Mountweazel

March 25, 2015 The Allusionist

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You'd think you could trust dictionaries, but it turns out, they are riddled with LIES. Visit theallusionist.org/mountweazel to find out more about this episode. Tweet @allusionistshow, and convene at facebook.com/allusionistshow.

You'd think you could trust dictionaries, but it turns out, they are riddled with LIES.

Delivering this upsetting news is Eley Williams, who is just finishing up her PhD about mountweazels, esquivalience and other hoax words that lexicographers have snuck into dictionaries.

SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL:

  • In 2009 a Dublin art gallery held an exhibition called 'The Life and Times of Lilian Virginia Mountweazel'.

  • Here's the process by which a real word gets into a dictionary.

  • And here's how they rooted out 'esquivalience'.

  • Cryptozoological hoaxes!

  • I love Eley's sister Catherine Williams's illustration of the made-up bird jungftak:

jungftak

RANDOMLY SELECTED WORD FROM THE DICTIONARY:
osculum

Say hi at facebook.com/allusionistshow and twitter.com/allusionistshow, and come back in a fortnight for the next episode.

- HZ

CREDITS

  • Eley Williams's website is giantratofsumatra.com and she is on Twitter as @giantratsumatra.

  • This episode was presented and produced by me, Helen Zaltzman.

MUSIC:

  • 'Allusionist Theme' - Martin Austwick

  • 'Would I Lie To You' - Charles and Eddie

  • 'Little Lies' - Fleetwood Mac

  • 'Suspicious Minds' - Elvis Presley

In episodes Tags dictionaries, lies, fibs, deceit, words, trust, lexicography, lexicographers, OED, Oxford English Dictionary, Mountweazels, jungftak, Eley Williams, appendicitis, esquivalience, mountweazels, Basset Hound, Poodle, Lillian Virginia Mountweazel, traps, tricks, copyright, copyright traps
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The Allusionist by Helen Zaltzman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.