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.

"Talking about music is like dancing about architecture" is a problematic statement: not just because nobody can agree on who came up with it, but because dancing about architecture doesn't seem particularly far-fetched. Talking about dance,

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“Talking about music is like dancing about architecture” is a problematic statement: not just because nobody can agree on who came up with it, but because dancing about architecture doesn’t seem particularly far-fetched. Talking about dance, however - that's really difficult. How do you put a wordless form of communication into words?

Audio describer Alice Sanders and choreographer Steven Hoggett take the issue for a twirl.

READING ABOUT DANCE IS LIKE READING ABOUT ARCHITECTURE:

If you want to find out more about "[doing a thing] about [a thing] is like [doing a different thing] about [another thing]" adages, take a look here and here.
Further werewolf reading-matter: find out about Old English wolf-words; read this plea for feminist werewolves/wifwolves; and this, apparently, is The Problem with Female Werewolves (too hairy for this bikini-waxed world?).
You want to learn Labanotation? Don't let me stop you.
You want to learn about the Step Up series of films? Don't let me stop you.
Steven Hoggett talks more about how he goes about his work, here and here.
Here is the transcript of this episode.

RANDOMLY SELECTED WORD FROM THE DICTIONARY:
poetaster

CREDITS:

Alice Sanders writes very funny articles and blogs. Find her at twitter.com/wernerspenguin.
Steven Hoggett is working on exciting forthcoming projects including the stage adaptation of Disney's Pinocchio, AND the Harry Potter play. You'll have to wait a little while for those; but his Burt Bacharach show, Close To You, is about to open at London's Criterion Theatre. The Curious Incident of the Dog In The Night-Time is on in the UK and on Broadway, and Once seems to be all over the place.
The non-speech noises in this episode were:

Allusionist Theme by Martin Austwick
The Nutcracker, Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty by Tchaikovsky
A snippet of the film version of A Chorus Line
Cinderella by Prokofiev

This episode was produced by me, Helen Zaltzman. Thanks to Eleanor McDowall and Miranda Sawyer.

Dance along to facebook.com/allusionistshow, twitter.com/allusionistshow and twitter.com/helenzaltzman.

There's lots of fun etymology of creatures and a lot of fun etymology derived from creatures, and now it is gathered into this fun playalong quiz about animal etymologies!

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Audio describer Alice Sanders and choreographer Steven Hoggett take the issue for a twirl.

READING ABOUT DANCE IS LIKE READING ABOUT ARCHITECTURE:

RANDOMLY SELECTED WORD FROM THE DICTIONARY:poetaster

CREDITS:

- HZ

RANDOMLY SELECTED WORD FROM THE DICTIONARY:
poetaster