Erin McKean
Erin McKean
Erin McKeanis an American lexicographer, based in the San Francisco Bay Area...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEditor
CountryUnited States of America
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.
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.
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.
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!'
limit number
You can limit the number of invitations to an in-person fashion show, but you can't police the Internet.
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.
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.