Ben Zimmer

Rebecca Greenfield, “The Rise of the Term ‘Glasshole,’ Explained by Linguists” (The Atlantic Wire, Apr. 22, 2013)

“There’s a reason ‘glasshole’ came first — it’s more intuitively obvious,” linguist Ben Zimmer told The Atlantic Wire. […] Further, there is a linguistic reason to choose glasshole: all the glass + ass profanity mixtures are what linguists call satisfying blends because they derive from two words whose sounds overlap, as another linguist explained back when we pondered the hatred toward the word “phablet,” which is an unsatisfying blend. All the Glass + wipe, hat, hole, etc work as these blends. But glasshole is more obvious than the others because it has been used in other blend combinations before. “‘Asshole’ has already generated other similar blends, notably ‘Masshole’ as an epithet for an inconsiderate Massachusetts driver,” Zimmer explained.

Read the rest here.

Mark Johnson, “UW’s Dictionary of American Regional English in Financial Peril” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Apr. 21, 2013)

Ben Zimmer, who writes a column for The Boston Globe called “The Word” and serves as executive producer for the language website vocabulary.com , called the potential loss of the dictionary “a tremendous blow” to scholarship on American English.

“It’s truly America’s dictionary,” said Zimmer. “It’s the best record we have for the diverse ways Americans have used language over the course of the Republic.”

Read the rest here.

Steve Lohr, “A Vocabulary Site Shows How to Tailor Online Education” (New York Times Bits blog, Apr. 10, 2013)

Thinkmap’s executive producer for Visual Thesaurus and Vocabulary.com is Ben Zimmer, a linguist, lexicographer and author, who wrote the “On Language” column in the New York Times Magazine after William Safire. Of Vocabulary.com, Mr. Zimmer said, “The technology makes it possible to create a dynamic learning environment that is personalized to the individual.”

Read the rest here.

Interview on KUOW’s “The Conversation with Ross Reynolds” about words people love, hate, or just find funny. (Apr. 8, 2013)

What’s so funny about peace, love and understanding? Nothing, but other words are hilarious! Ross Reynolds talks with language columnist Ben Zimmer about words we love, words we hate and words that simply make us laugh.

(Show page, audio)

“Media Diet: What I Read” on The Atlantic Wire (Apr. 4, 2013).

Linguist, lexicographer, and self-professed word nerd Ben Zimmer takes in an admirable amount of information daily, across all forms of media, new and old. It’s not just about words.

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Interview on NPR’s Weekend Edition about difficulties in labeling straight and gay relationships. (Mar. 29, 2013)

But 30 years later, straight and gay people are still struggling with the same questions.

“Each of these terms has its own problems,” says Ben Zimmer, executive producer of the Visual Thesaurus and Vocabulary.com. “For instance, ‘partner’ sounds very official or contractual. ‘Companion’ sounds unromantic or even euphemistic. ‘Lover’ might just be too explicit. ‘Boyfriend’ and ‘girlfriend’ are inappropriate for a lot of people, unless they’re a teenager.”

When the love that dare not speak its name finally opens its mouth, people can get tripped up on the words.

(Show page, audio, transcript)

Katy Steinmetz, “The Controversial Language of Gay Rights” (Time Swampland blog, Mar. 27, 2013)

Take traditional marriage. On the one hand, opponents of same-sex marriage can use that language to purposefully elevate heterosexual marriage as a more established, legitimate relationship. In a piece assessing journalists’ coverage of same-sex marriage battles for Columbia Journalism Review, Jennifer Vanasco highlights this point:

She uses “traditional marriage advocates” to refer to people against same-sex marriage and “gay marriage” to name the issue. “Gay marriage” and “same-sex marriage” are neutral terms. But “traditional marriage” is not. It’s a phrase used by conservatives to imply that marriage between a man and a woman has been the norm forever …

But, says linguist Ben Zimmer, while the appeal to tradition is an important part of the argument against legalizing gay marriage, referring to heterosexual marriage as “traditional” undermines that position, too. “By calling it ‘traditional marriage,’ you’ve already ceded the ground that there is another kind of marriage,” he says. With the attempt to distance comes (perhaps inadvertent) recognition.

Read the rest here.

Katy Steinmetz, “Seven Hang-Ups in the Language of Gay Rights” (Time Newsfeed, Mar. 27, 2013)

Marriage: For years, lexicographers have pored over the term at the center of Supreme Court proceedings today, trying to tweak dictionary entries to reflect how all people use the word, regardless of their political persuasions. “Lexicographers end up in a no-win situation, where no matter what they do, somebody’s going to have trouble with the definition,” says Ben Zimmer, linguist and executive producer at Vocabulary.com.

Some dictionaries, like the historically ordered Merriam-Webster, have added a second definition for same-sex marriage and left the main entry referring to a man and a woman. Zimmer points out that some gay rights activists balk at that fix, however, feeling a second definition suggests that gay marriage is second class.

Read the rest here.

Interview on the WGBH show “Boston Public Radio” about an initiative in Providence, RI to narrow the “word gap.” (Mar. 26, 2013)

A new study revealed children in high-income families heard and learned more language — more words in total — than children in low-income families. Boston Globe language columnist Ben Zimmer joined Margery and Jim to talk about a solution. Ben Zimmer is featured Sundays in the Globe’s Ideas section.

(Show page, audio, related Boston Globe column; interview begins 47 minutes into the show)