Category: Newsletter

MADELINE KRIPKE 1943-2020 From Collection of Madeline Kripke. Reuse prohibited. Madeline Kripke, who died aged 76 on April 25, 2020, yet another of New York’s many victims of Covid-19, was for the bulk of her life the world’s leading, if not unique collector of lexicographical material, both historical and contemporary. This was especially the case as regarded her unrivalled library of slang dictionaries and allied ‘counter-linguistic’ material, which had set her career in motion more than forty years ago. The classic poacher-turned-gamekeeper, she moved from a fascination with dictionaries, first encountered as source of delight when very young, to establishing herself as a dealer in their finest or most recondite examples, with a focus on the less respected, but by extension less easily available slang lexis, and finally, falling in love with her stock as must be a temptation for every variety of dealer, to become a  collector pure and simple. If one might rewrite the alleged ‘whore’s excuse’, in collecting terms,...

Collecting Column for the Newsletter David Vancil Linda Mitchell was planning to write another piece in this issue on a wordbook-rich collection she has made use of, but having to prepare online classes for fall classes (she teaches at San Jose State University) is taking up her time and energy. With the loss of Madeline Kripke, we are experiencing not only a sadness at her death but the uncertainty of knowing what will happen to the physical manifestation of legacy—her thousands of dictionaries and other works of interest to DSNA members. What will happen to her wonderful books? She had considered for many years what should be done with them. But she was brought down by COVID-19 without having made any concrete plans, as far is known. Let’s hope for the best. I recall in conversations with Tom Rodgers, who focused on books lacking in the Cordell Collection, that he was contemplating donating his collection to a university, in particular Emory University. Tom was...

Three items concerning major North American Dictionary Projects: The online Middle English Dictionary remains an active project under the custodianship of the University of Michigan Library, where, however, it has to compete for time and attention with other text and software-development projects, including the enlargement of EEBO-TCP (Early English Books Online). Its helpline (mec-info@umich.edu) is monitored, its platform remains in development (with date-sorting next on the to-do list), a small team of editors continues to add and correct the text almost daily, and re-loads of the online data should be expected on a roughly annual basis.  Compared with the original e-MED, the present revival effort, now entering its fourth year, has added about 1,600 bibliographic 'stencils,' 2,500 dictionary entries, and 16,000 quotations.Though the project has a dauntingly long list of improvements to work on, it is concentrating this year (2020) on six areas: (1) examining and entering information from the last 1,000 or so 'Supplement slips' (produced by editors of the...

From the President In my April message to DSNA friends and colleagues, I referred to the strange times we were in. At that point, Britain like other countries had just gone into lockdown; now as we all experiment with some form of emergence, the times hardly seem less strange. However, it does seem important to say that it has been and remains a key concern of the Board that work for DSNA continues on track. Since I last wrote, the current issue of our excellent Journal has appeared on schedule, and I am compiling this to meet the July deadline for our Newsletter.  Plans for our biennial in Colorado, June 2021, continue. I want now to update you on one particular aspect of what we have been doing as a Board, as regards strategic planning. The Board is taking time to reflect on our core values, and consider how best the Society’s vision may be delivered in a rapidly changing world. What...

2021 Conference Postponed With great regret, but having carefully considered the circumstances relating to the COVID pandemic, the Executive Board of DSNA has agreed to postpone the planned in-person 2021 biennial meeting. The Board has an unwavering commitment to holding an in-person meeting, with the focus already publicized, at a later date to be announced as soon as possible. We are also exploring the feasibility of holding an exciting one-day virtual meeting in June of 2021. More details will follow, but it seemed right to convey the key information without delay. Elizabeth KnowlesPresident, DSNA DSNA XXIII in Boulder Orin Hargraves The 2021 DSNA conference will be held at the University of Colorado, Boulder, or CU as the locals call it. Many of you know that I have worked there for the last several years in various capacities, none of which credentials me to host a conference at the institution. Happily, a colleague has agreed to be our faculty sponsor. So firstly, hats off to Laura Michaelis-Cummings,...

Kory Stamper was recently part of the solution to a NYT acrostic. And the quotation is about lexicographers. See more at https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/08/crosswords/variety-acrostic.html From Sarah Ogilvie we hear about the new book, The Whole World in a Book: Dictionaries in the Nineteenth Century (OUP, 2020) edited by Sarah Ogilvie & Gabriella Safran. It looks at the creation of dictionaries globally in the nineteenth century and includes essays on languages as diverse as Manchu Chinese, Russian, Libras (Brazilian sign language), and Persian (to name but a few) by scholars including Michael Adams, John Considine, Anne Dykstra, Ed Finegan, Volker Harm, Sarah Ogilvie, Susan Rennie, Lindsay Rose Russell, Gabriella Safran, Peter Sokolowski, and Ilya Vinitsky. From David Barnhart: Barnhart’s Never-finished Political Dictionary of the 21st Century—Second Edition (c. 2019) is now available from the publisher: Lexik House Publishers, P.O. Box 2018, Hyde Park, N.Y. 12538 This edition is substantially enlarged from the original publication (698 + viii pp).  It is composed of 3,500+ entries, over 5,000 quotations, and 50 articles devoted...

1. To make it easier to navigate the Newsletter the introduction will now contain a TOC to the various posts of the Newsletter. 2. Member News: Peter Chipman offers news that has been gathered about our members. 3. Conferences: Orin Hargraves announces the DSNA’s next conference and a Call for Papers, and Lise Winer lists conferences of interest. 4. DSNA: Elizabeth Knowles, our president, addresses our Society and Ed Finegan reports on Globalex. He also brings an interesting puzzle to our attention from a past issue of our Journal. 5. Dictionaries: We offer material on three major North American dictionary projects, the MED, DARE, and DOE. 6. Collections: David Vancil discusses the Library of Congress. 7. Madeline Kripke is memorialized by Jonathon Green, Michael Adams, and David Vancil. 8. Education: Katie Welch tells us how she uses dictionaries in the college classroom for sociolinguistic inquiry. 9. History: David Jost offers a history of the staff of the Middle English Dictionary. 10. State of Lexicography: Orin Hargraves tells us about...