Featured on the NPR news quiz show “Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!” in a limerick about ugly words. (Show page, audio)
Ben Zimmer in the News
On MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann, named “the second-best person in the world” for debunking the myth of “Cronkiters.” (Video)
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Frazier Moore, “The Term ‘Cronkiter’ Faces Scrutiny, Debunking” (Associated Press, Aug. 5, 2009)
At the heart of the inquiry was Ben Zimmer, executive producer of the Visual Thesaurus and editor of its online magazine, who wrote about “The Mystery of ‘Cronkiters.'”
Interview on the NPR show “On the Media” about the linguistic myths surrounding Walter Cronkite.
Did you know that Walter Cronkite is so identified with the news business that in Sweden an anchorman is called a “Kronkiter”? And speaking of anchorman, did you know that word was coined in the 1950s to define Cronkite’s role on broadcast TV? Neither did we. Perhaps because none of it is true. Ben Zimmer, executive producer of the Visual Thesaurus, traced some of the myths surrounding the man who was once the most trusted in America.
(Show page, transcript, audio, related Word Routes column, related Slate article)
Kate Phillips, “Live Blogging Sotomayor Hearings” (New York Times The Caucus blog, July 16, 2009).
For amusement, Ben Zimmer, a linguist at the VisualThesaurus blog, wrote about nunchakus recently.
Read the rest here.
Interview on Voice of America’s “Wordmaster” program about the discovery of the earliest use of Ms. (Transcript, audio)
Discovery of the first use of Ms. linked by Andrew Sullivan’s Atlantic blog, “The Daily Dish.”
Eric Zorn, “‘Ms.’ is Older Than We Thought” (Chicago Tribune Change of Subject blog, June 24, 2009).
Dogged language maven Ben Zimmer sent me a link to a column in which he announces the discovery of the source of `Ms.’
Read the rest here.
Jan Freeman, “Elusive ‘Ms.’ May Be a Mass. Invention” (Boston Globe The Word blog, June 23, 2009).
Ben Zimmer, who has been on the lookout for early uses of Ms for several years, has found what may be the first proposal for the all-purpose female honorific — in a 1901 edition of the Springfield Republican newspaper. Zimmer, executive producer of the language website Visual Thesaurus, reports the discovery today in his Word Routes column.
Read the rest here.