Erin McKean
Erin McKean
Erin McKeanis an American lexicographer, based in the San Francisco Bay Area...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEditor
CountryUnited States of America
deeply easily english finds motivated personal tend
Objections to verbification in English tend to be motivated by personal taste, not clarity. Verbed words are usually easily understood. When a word like 'friend' is declared not a verb, the problem isn't that it's confusing; it's that the protester finds it deeply annoying.
chance couple mental refreshed rested visit
For me, conferences are like little mental vacations: a chance to go visit an interesting place for a couple of days, and come back rested and refreshed with new ideas and perspectives.
almost drafted eternal serve
Almost any word can be drafted to serve as a verb, even words we think of as eternal and unchanging, stuck in their more traditional roles.
limit number
You can limit the number of invitations to an in-person fashion show, but you can't police the Internet.
consumers deciding dictionary flip good great metric whether
Most consumers don't have a good metric for deciding on whether the dictionary they want to use is a good one... so they flip the book over, then go to the back, and it says, 'Over 250,000 entries.' And they go, 'Great, this dictionary must be awesome!'
amount considered
If you say 'anti-aging,' how anti would it have to be, really? My guess is not much. Any amount of sunscreen could be considered anti-aging.
love
Words are so lovable. How could you not love words?
ideally information word
Ideally my goal is, before I die, to have some information about every word that's ever been used in print.
laughed love
A love letter is to be savored; a love email... is to be forwarded to all your friends, and probably laughed at.
food metaphors somebody
The use of food metaphors is really well established English... Somebody is a peach, a hot tamale.
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.'
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.
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.
If words are doing their job, then their novelty will not be the most noticeable thing about them.