Category: Newsletter

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...

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 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.  ...

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...

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)....

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...

DSNA Conference The 21st Conference of the DSNA will be held in Barbados June 9-11 with an excursion on June 12. The website http://dsna21.weebly.com/ shown above has all the details as well as the registration form. Here are the headings of the various links with a few annotations. Home, About, Call for Papers, Venue, Accommodation, Registration (opens March 1), Programme (check in April), Special Events (Pre-Conference Workshop, Conference Banquet, Island Tour June 12), Useful Information (Travel Tips, Barbados Facts and Figures, Host University),  Contact Other conferences HEL-LEX5, 5th International Symposium on History of English Lexicography and Lexicology, 16-18 February 2017, Zurich, Switzerland,  http://www.hel-lex5.uzh.ch/en.html SHEL 10, English Department, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS. 2-4, June 2017. http://shel10.ku.edu/ ASIALEX 2017,  the National Key Research Center for Linguistics and Applied Linguistics at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies (GDUFS), Guangzhou, China. 10-12, June 2017. AustraLex Conference, University of the South Pacific, Rarotonga, Cook Islands. 28-29 August 2017. http://www.adelaide.edu.au/australex/ eLex Conference, Institute of the Dutch Language, Leiden, the Netherlands, second half of September 2017. https://elex.link/elex2017/ 19th Century Lexicography Conference: Between Science...

The Frederic G. Cassidy Award for Distinguished Achievement in Lexicography or Lexicology is presented to a senior member of the Society who has, throughout his or her career, significantly advanced lexicography or lexicology by major achievements at the highest scholarly standard in one or both of those fields. The Richard W. Bailey Award for Distinguished Service to Lexicography and Lexicology is presented to a senior member of the Society who has, throughout his or her career, significantly advanced lexicography or lexicology by service to one or both of those fields. The awards are presented biennially, for the first time in 2015, when Gerald L. Cohen received the Cassidy Award, and J. Edward Gates the Bailey Award. This year, a committee composed of Victoria Neufeldt, Allan Metcalf, Rod McConchie, Sarah Ogilvie, and me considered various candidates for the awards, and we are pleased to announce that Lise Winer will be the second recipient of the Cassidy Award and Madeline Kripke the...