Ben Zimmer

Interviewed on the CBC Radio Show “Q with Jian Ghomeshi” about Lily Rothman’s suggestion that gal should be used as the feminine equivalent of guy (at 5 minutes into the segment). (Mar. 22, 2012)

(Show page, audio)

Jacqueline Trescott, “Dictionary of American Regional English Completed” (Style blog, Washington Post, Mar. 21, 2012)

What also sets [The Dictionary of American Regional English] apart, said Ben Zimmer, the executive producer of Visual Thesaurus and Vocabulary.com, is a sense of discovery and familiarity. These are words and expressions, he said, that “you are not going to find in other dictionaries.”

Read the rest here.

Rebecca J. Rosen, “Meet Dr. Fill, the Computer Who May Best the World’s Top Crossword-Puzzle Solvers” (The Atlantic, Mar. 12, 2012)

This coming weekend a computer program named Dr. Fill (get it?) will take a gander at the tough word puzzles at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in Brooklyn. Dr. Fill won’t actually be a contestant in the event, but anyone who beats it — *if* anyone beats it — will receive an “I Beat Dr. Fill” button from New York Times puzzle editor Will Shortz. The program is the work of Matt Ginsberg, a computer scientist and longtime puzzle-lover from Eugene, Oregon, Ben Zimmer writes in The Boston Globe.

Read the rest here. (Related Boston Globe column)

John E. McIntyre, “A Distinctively American Dictionary” (The Baltimore Sun, Mar. 9, 2012)

The National Endowment for the Humanities threw a reception at the Old Post Office Building in Washington for the publication of the fifth and concluding volume of [The Dictionary of American Regional English]. Joan Houston Hall, the chief editor, and Ben Zimmer, the linguist, spoke about the heroic accomplishment, and family members of the late Frederic Cassidy, the original editor, were present to share in the triumph. …

While the gaudier locutions catch the public eye, Mr. Zimmer pointed out that many of the little things, such as prepositions, will be of immense interest to lexicographers.

Read the rest here.

Participated in a National Endowment for the Humanities press conference announcing the completion of the Dictionary of American Regional English.

The National Endowment for the Humanities held a press conference on March 8, 2012, in its offices in Washington, D.C., to announce the completion of  DARE‘s text with the publication of Volume V in March.  Joan Houston Hall, DARE’s Chief Editor,  and Ben Zimmer, Visual Thesaurus executive producer and language columnist for the Boston Globe, discuss the significance of the Dictionary‘s completion.

More information here.

Ian Simpson, “US Regional Dictionary Gets In Last Word As It Wraps Up Work” (Reuters, Mar. 8, 2012)

The American Dictionary of Regional English has finally reached its final word – “zydeco” – as researchers wrap up almost 50 years of work charting the rich variety of American speech.

The dictionary’s official publication date is March 20 but lexicographers and word fans have been celebrating ever since its fifth and final volume emerged earlier this year.

“It truly is America’s dictionary,” Ben Zimmer, a language columnist and lexicographer, told a Washington, D.C. news conference on Thursday.

He said when the final printed volume was delivered to its longtime editor, Joan Houston Hall, at a meeting of fellow dialect scholars: “There were audible gasps in the room.”

Read the rest here.

Interviewed on “The Diane Rehm Show” about the completion of the Dictionary of American Regional English, with DARE editor Joan Houston Hall. (Mar. 7, 2012)

In Ohio, the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the curb is called a “tree lawn.” In other parts of the country, it is a “curb,” a “devil’s strip,” a “parkway,” a “swale,” or a “street lawn.” More than a dozen names for this can be found in the Dictionary of American Regional English. The fifth volume covers words and phrases from ‘slab’ to ‘zydeco’ and completes a fifty-year project to capture the unique ways people in different parts of the country speak. The dictionary has been used to solve crimes, teach medical students, train actors, and understand political candidates. Joan Hall, chief editor of the dictionary, and linguist Ben Zimmer join Diane to discuss the diversity of American language.

(Show page, audio, related Boston Globe column)

Brian Palmer, “When Did ‘Douche’ Become an Insult?” (Slate, Mar. 2, 2012)

Lexicographer and Slate contributor Ben Zimmer points to a 1987 taping of The Morton Downey Jr. Show, during which an audience member taunted Lyndon Larouche with the phrase “Larouche is a douche.” The 1991 Anthrax song “Startin’ Up a Posse” includes the lyrics “You’re a douche, you’re a douche, you’re a douche,” in apparent reference to record executives and/or government censors.

Read the rest here.

On his Daily Beast blog “The Dish,” Andrew Sullivan is intrigued by “The Roots Of ‘Meh’“:

Ben Zimmer studies up:

Yiddish appears to be the ultimate source. I checked with Ben Sadock, a Yiddish expert in New York, and he turned up a tantalizing early example. In the 1928 edition of his Yiddish-English-Hebrew dictionary, Alexander Harkavy included the word meh (written in the corresponding Hebrew letters) and glossed it as an interjection meaning “be it as it may” and an adjective meaning “so-so.” (Meh is also used in Yiddish to represent the bleating of goats, but Sadock doesn’t think the two types of meh are necessarily related.)

From Zimmer’s blog:

[“The Simpsons” writer John] Swartzwelder did have a memory of where he first came across meh, though it wasn’t in Mad. “I had originally heard the word from an advertising writer named Howie Krakow back in 1970 or 1971 who insisted it was the funniest word in the world,” he told me.