Erin McKean
Erin McKean
Erin McKeanis an American lexicographer, based in the San Francisco Bay Area...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEditor
CountryUnited States of America
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.'
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.
few good publicity ways
There are very few good ways to get publicity for a dictionary.
If words are doing their job, then their novelty will not be the most noticeable thing about them.
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.
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.
restore using verb
We've been using 'rejuvenate,' meaning to restore youth, to make young again, as a verb for at least 200 years.
food metaphors somebody
The use of food metaphors is really well established English... Somebody is a peach, a hot tamale.
annoy dictionary guaranteed habit starting
If anything is guaranteed to annoy a lexicographer, it is the journalistic habit of starting a story with a dictionary definition.
ideally information word
Ideally my goal is, before I die, to have some information about every word that's ever been used in print.
love
Words are so lovable. How could you not love words?
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.
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!'