Erin McKean
Erin McKean
Erin McKeanis an American lexicographer, based in the San Francisco Bay Area...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEditor
CountryUnited States of America
people
What I'm interested in is how people are reading and writing English.
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.
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.
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.
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.
exactly wishing
Twitter is like overhearing people's conversations, which is exactly what dictionary editors have been wishing we could do for years.
lexicographer language reporters
Lexicographers are language reporters.
language popularity contests
All language is a popularity contest.
nice way remember
Language is a nice way to remember things.
dying aging has-beens
Aging has been bad ever since we figured out it led to dying.
serendipity difficult findings
Serendipity is when you find things you weren't looking for because finding what you are looking for is so damned difficult.
attention pay-attention time-passes
Experiences is just paying attention as time passes.
nice littles being-nice
You can weaponize nice... Being nice can make you be a little underestimated.
listening mimi want
if you want someone to stop listening to you go ahead and yell. If you want them to listen to every word, whisper. -Mimi