Erin McKean
Erin McKean
Erin McKeanis an American lexicographer, based in the San Francisco Bay Area...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEditor
CountryUnited States of America
restore using verb
We've been using 'rejuvenate,' meaning to restore youth, to make young again, as a verb for at least 200 years.
dictionary learned looking love
Most of the words you know and love and use every day are not words you learned by looking them up in a dictionary and reading a definition.
exactly wishing
Twitter is like overhearing people's conversations, which is exactly what dictionary editors have been wishing we could do for years.
creativity ecosystem engine entire extend interact platform power showing signs sites twitter
Twitter has already birthed an entire ecosystem of other sites that extend its power or interact with it. But Twitter isn't just a platform for technological innovation: It's showing signs as an engine of creativity for the language, too.
dictionary print thousands
There are hundreds of thousands of words that aren't in any print dictionary today... because there's no space for all of them.
choose flannel hindsight looking notice pictures ripped time word year
It's difficult to choose a Word of the Year in the year that you're in. It's one of those things that hindsight makes more apparent. It's like looking at pictures from 10 years ago, and you notice the flannel and the ripped jeans. At the time, it didn't look to you like a real fashion trend.
If words are doing their job, then their novelty will not be the most noticeable thing about them.
people
We think people go to a dictionary to find out what a word means. Most people go to the dictionary because they don't want to look stupid.
creating distance hoping informal naturally none perhaps run themselves writers
Writers who hedge their use of unfamiliar, infrequent, or informal words with 'I know that's not a real word,' hoping to distance themselves from criticism, run the risk of creating doubt where perhaps none would have naturally arisen.
boundless complain cool describe english machine mean pleasure word
Part of the joy and pleasure of English is its boundless creativity: I can describe a new machine as bicyclish, I can say that I'm vitamining myself to stave off a cold, I can complain that someone is the smilingest person I've ever seen, and I can decide, out of the blue, that 'fetch' is now the word I want to use to mean 'cool.'
believe conscious demands recycle
I think we would all like to believe that every new event demands a new word. But we're environmentally conscious with our words. We recycle words we've got.
people
What I'm interested in is how people are reading and writing English.
food metaphors somebody
The use of food metaphors is really well established English... Somebody is a peach, a hot tamale.
laughed love
A love letter is to be savored; a love email... is to be forwarded to all your friends, and probably laughed at.