MEMBER NEWS FALL 2018

On 20 July Peter Gilliver was awarded a PhD by the University of Cambridge for his work on the history of the OED. The body of published work submitted for consideration included principally his book The Making of the OED—which has just been issued in paperback—but also several papers given at DSNA conferences or published in Dictionaries. Brianne Hughes reports: the Bishop Fox Cybersecurity Style Guide was compiled over the last 2 years to help the technical editors and security researchers of Bishop Fox be technically accurate and internally consistent in their technical reports. Since its public release, groups like tech journalists, sci-fi writers, and non-security businesses have used it as a starting place for their own in-house style guides. The guide’s usage notes focus on how to capitalize terms in the middle of a sentence, how to pronounce them, and when to use monospace font. Most terms do not have a definition, but many make the user aware of potential...
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INTRODUCTION FALL 2018

A grateful editor thanks all who have contributed to this issue and looks forward to the future contributions of these and many more of you. This Newsletter reflects all that you are doing in the service of words and dictionaries. In this issue of the Newsletter, in addition to the usual features, you will find the second of what we hope will be a series of pieces on the state of lexicography: Jason Siegel's “Lexicography in the French Caribbean: An assessment of future opportunities.“  I begin a series of articles on the history of the DSNA Newsletter. David Vancil draws on more of his vast experience to tell us about “Memories of Missouri & Collectors.” We also learn from Walter Hakala and his student Kerry Collins about his course in lexicography, one of a continuing series about teaching the subject. I hope that others of you who offer similar courses will contribute. Something to which lexicographers can aspire: the Joseph Worcester house on Brattle Street,...
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PUBLICATION INFORMATION SPRING 2018

The DSNA Newsletter is usually published twice a year, in the Spring and Fall. The editor is David Jost. Member news items can be sent to dsna.membernews@gmail.com. Other Newsletter correspondence, such as articles for publication, should be directed 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. 42 No. 1 (2018) Cumulative issue #85...
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STATE OF LEXICOGRAPHY SPRING 2018

Orin Hargraves kicks off a series of pieces I am commissioning about the state of lexicography at present: The 21st Century Lexicographer My view of the profession of lexicography is through a lens shared by many, though not all, of my colleagues: I am now and have always been an independent contractor, a freelance, and never a salaried employee of a dictionary publisher. My guess is that today, most people who define words in exchange for money work in the same capacity as I do and to that degree, my perspective may reflect the experience of others. Perhaps a good way to focus the current state of the occupation is to look at what came before it. I see the trajectory of lexicography over the last quarter century as a series of line graphs, with time on the horizontal axis and various changing parameters on the vertical. I’m better with words than with graphs, so here are descriptions of the graphs with arrows...
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EDUCATION NEWS SPRING 2018

Teaching Lexicography Janet DeCesaris Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona For several years, I taught a class entitled Lexicography in an M.A. program in Applied Linguistics offered by Pompeu Fabra University, a public university in Barcelona, Spain. While this degree program was offered, the class attracted students mainly from Europe and Latin America. My views on teaching lexicography are thus a consequence of this experience. As with designing any class, an important question for me was to first identify what information and skills I wanted the students to learn in the class. This, of course, partly depended on the background of the students and the goals of the degree program as a whole, but to a large extent depended on priorities I set. I was not going to be able to teach everything there is to know about dictionaries and dictionary-making in one term, so determining what was to be included was a challenge. The following are the topics included in my syllabus, in their original...
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HISTORY OF DICTIONARIES SPRING 2018

Cynthia Barnhart enlightens us about the historic nature of Clarence Barnhart’s dictionary done for the U.S Army. The Very First Barnhart Dictionary: The Dictionary of U.S. Army Terms (1944) The first paragraph of the prefatory “Notes on the Use of the Dictionary” lays out its purpose: “a working dictionary for a working army. … It is designed especially for the men who are writing or revising training literature, who are using training literature in the instruction of troops, and as far as it is available to them, for the men who are being trained.”[1] The dictionary was made in the early 1940s when the United States was already at war with the Axis powers and needed to prepare thousands of recruits drafted into its army. Those recruits were not professional soldiers; they were not familiar with either military language or the reality of being part of an army prosecuting a war nor were they selected from a particular group of citizens; they were...
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COLLECTION NEWS SPRING 2018

We are graced once again with a piece by David Vancil, one of the DSNA authorities on the collection of dictionaries. Booksellers, Collectors, and Librarians: Building a Special Collection In my experience, most antiquarian booksellers are motivated not primarily by the desire for profit but by a genuine love for the long and complex history of books. Some booksellers, as we know, hang on to the books they love the most and become book collectors. Conversely, although possibly less frequently, some booksellers become collectors first before getting into selling. And not a few antiquarian booksellers become scholars in their own right along the way. Antiquarian booksellers’ sale catalogs frequently contain valuable information which is the result of many hours, if not years, of research.  In fact, not a few antiquarian booksellers’ catalogs are considered indispensable to librarians and researchers. With respect to books purchased for the Cordell Collection from sellers’ catalogs, I retained the catalogs of many booksellers and even had some of...
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DICTIONARY NEWS SPRING 2018

The big news here is the farewell celebration for DARE. We also have a piece by Eugene Green about use of the Middle English Dictionary.  And we commemorate the passing of Herbert Ernest Wiegand. DARE Farewell Celebration October 27, 2017 As of the end of 2017, the last three of DARE’s employees are no longer working, and the Dictionary of American Regional English is officially out of business.  We decided earlier to end with a celebration, focusing on what we have accomplished: five large volumes covering the whole of the alphabet plus one supplementary volume with geographical and social maps, an index to all the regional and usage terms used (e.g. Danish, euphemism, folk-etymology, Gulf States, Vermont, middle-aged, Shawnee, taboo) followed by all the entries in which such a term occurred, and more – great fun to browse.  DARE also has an online presence. About 150 former DARE staff members, volunteers, student workers, supporters, and friends showed up on Oct. 27 in Madison to help us celebrate.  Many still live...
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CONFERENCES SPRING 2018

DSNA 22 at Indiana University May 8–11, 2019 DSNA returns to Bloomington, Indiana, and the campus of Indiana University for its 22nd Biennial Meeting, May 8–11, 2019, and so does Studies in the History of the English Language (SHEL), with which DSNA 20 collaborated in Vancouver in 2015. A separate Call for Papers will be sent to DSNA members late in the summer but abstracts for regular sessions (20-minute papers) should be sent to adamsmp@indiana.edu by October 31, 2018. Participants will be notified of acceptance and a preliminary program posted on the yet-to-be-constructed conference site by the December holidays. We should have the site up and running in mid-summer and will advertise its URL in the summer Call for Papers. The conference will convene with a reception (perhaps after an opening session) on Wednesday evening, May 8. Concurrent sessions for DSNA and SHEL will be scheduled throughout Thursday, Friday, and Saturday morning, with SHEL and DSNA business meetings schedule on Saturday after lunch. The conference...
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