DSNA 2017 CONFERENCE IN BARBADOS
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DSNA NEWS FALL 2017
The latest news includes information about our Publications Committee (PubCom), two Society awards, a gift the Society has recently made, and the dates of our 2019 conference.
New Office and Officer in her own words
"By day, Brianne Hughes is a technical editor at Bishop Fox, where she ensures the quality of information security reports, develops internal reference materials, and provides ongoing training to consultants. By night, she continues her compound morphology research at EncyclopediaBriannica.com. She has shared her linguistic findings with Ignite Portland, SHEL/DSNA, and Odd Salon. She is a member of the American Copy Editors Society (ACES), is Associate Executive Secretary for the Dictionary Society of North America (DSNA), and is on the board of directors at Wordnik Society, Inc. Brianne received a Masters in Linguistics from the University of York in 2012."
PubCom
Wendi Nichols, head of the committee, describes the purview of the committee:
In general we oversee the information channels of the Society - the journal, the newsletter, and the website. We advise on books to review...
MEMBER NEWS FALL 2017
Kory Stamper’s debut book Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries was published by Pantheon in March and has attracted widespread interest, with appreciative articles appearing in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, and other print and digital media, along with interviews on NPR’s Fresh Air and Here and Now. A review in Publisher’s Weekly describes Word by Word as “A witty, sly, occasionally profane behind-the-scenes tour aimed at deposing the notion of ‘real and proper English.’”
David Vancil, a longtime contributor to the DSNA newsletter and former curator of the Cordell Collection of Dictionaries, has published in many fields touching on collections held in the library of Indiana State University. Included in this bibliography are two books he compiled relating to the history of lexicography and four monographs bringing together many of his published poems.
Lexicography:
Catalog of Dictionaries, Word Books, and Philological Texts, 1440-1900: Inventory of the Cordell Collection of Dictionaries, Indiana State University. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993. 397 pp.
Incunable Dictionaries: A Checklist and Publishing History. Kevin Jett, editorial assistant. Terre...
INTRODUCTION FALL 2017
In this issue of the Newsletter you will find a celebration, bibliomania, vital history, and educational material of interest as well as much else. I have formalized various departments such as Member News, DSNA News, and so on. Once again I am grateful for the editorial help of Peter Chipman of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and the American Heritage Dictionary.
Please remember that you the members are the resource for the Newsletter and I welcome all contributors.
David Jost, Editor
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Publishing Information
The DSNA Newsletter is usually published twice a year, in the Spring and Fall. The editor is David Jost. News of members and other items of interest to our readers are welcome. Please send Newsletter correspondence, such as items for publication, to the editor at dajebj@gmail.com.
Send correspondence re membership, etc. to
Kory Stamper, Executive Secretary, DSNA
PO Box 537
Collingswood, NJ 08108-0537
This issue: Vol. 41 No. 1 (2017)
Cumulative issue #83...
Dictionary Society of North America Election Results 2017
Report of election of Officers and Board Members-at-Large
The Nominating Committee of the DSNA (Chair David Jost; Connie Eble, Michael Hancher) submitted the following ballot for 2017 and these are our new officers. A biography of each is given below. Steve Kleinedler, as present Vice-President/President-Elect, becomes President for 2017-2019. Stefan Dollinger and Lise Winer continue as Members-at-Large for 2017-2019.
Elizabeth Knowles began her career as a historical lexicographer at Oxford University Press in 1977, working as a library researcher for the second Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary. She was subsequently a senior editor for a major revision of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (4th edition, OUP 1993), when she was responsible for the dictionary’s historical research programme. She took over responsibility for Oxford’s quotations dictionaries in 1993, and has edited the last four editions of the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (8th edition, 2014). Other editorial credits for OUP include What They Didn’t Say: A Book of Misquotations (2006) and How to...
Katy Isaacs
Katy has retired from her role with the Newsletter. She edited 10 issues from 2008 to 2012, and assisted with the editing or production of 5 more between 2013 and 2016. The Society expresses its gratitude to her for her many years of service.
Katy says:
I would like to thank everyone who contributed, especially former Executive Secretary Lisa Berglund, who was unfailingly cheerful and helpful. Many of the issues would not have appeared were it not for her organizational skills. Staunch columnists David Vancil and Reinhard Hartmann filled many pages for me, and Michael Adams, Luanne von Schneidemesser, Joan Hall, Wendalyn Nichols, Rebecca Shapiro, Martha Mayou, and David Jost provided text, photos, technical and emotional support, and much needed nagging; thank you all.
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Reports and News of Various Societies and Organizations
ACLS Report on the DSNA
Rebecca Shapiro, our Executive Secretary, wrote the following report for the ACLS. It was published with reports from other learned societies in a document entitled "Beyond the Numbers." Here is her explanation of how she came to write this, followed by the report itself.
I felt compelled (really) to volunteer for this because we are one of the most unusual organizations in the ACLS because of the history of academics and working lexicographers. I have liked the practical, applied nature of what many people in the society do and how willing they are to share information. I have found myself explaining how different we are at the ACLS meetings because not only are we one of the smallest but we are such an interesting hybrid group of practitioners and scholars, some of whom are both. So, when the leadership asked for a representative from a small organization, my hand went up.
Dictionary Society of North America
Rebecca Shapiro, Executive...
MetroLex
After the DSNA meeting in Vancouver, people were wishing to prolong the good energy that goes with a conference and were disappointed that the next one would be in two years. In that spirit, Katherine Martin, Ben Zimmer, Wendi Nichols, Ammon Shea, and I—all who live in and around New York City—created a DSNA-sponsored series on lexicography. The email messages in December were exploratory, getting a sense of what we hoped to accomplish. At a meeting we clarified the mission and named ourselves. The early winner was DSNY—perfect, until Ben or Ammon pointed out that those are the initials of the Department of Sanitation, and lexicographers aren’t really into sanitizing the language anymore anyway. Being from New Jersey and feeling a bit put upon by NY—as people from New Jersey often do—I suggested MetroDS (rejected because Ben pointed out that DS in NYC stands for Department of Sanitation and we are not in the business of cleaning up our language)....
LSU’s Lincoln Lexicon: An 18th-Century Dictionary and the 16th President
Few have ever mastered the English language like Abraham Lincoln. From his days as a young, backwoods bibliophile to one of history’s most expressive writers, Lincoln’s love of language helps us understand not only the man, but all that he represents. How did Lincoln acquire his remarkable way with words? An eighteenth-century dictionary now in the Rare Book Collection at Louisiana State University sheds some light on the question.
LSU’s copy of the 1770 edition of Nathan Bailey’s Universal Etymological English Dictionary was owned by Mordecai Lincoln, the future president’s uncle and one of the most influential figures in his early life. First published in 1721 and reissued many times over the next eighty years, Bailey’s dictionary was used throughout the English-speaking world, including the new state of Kentucky, where this copy came into Mordecai Lincoln’s possession at least as early as 1792.
The volume raises interesting questions. Scrawled in the margins next to Bailey’s definitions of catfish and castanets are the...