Ben Zimmer

David Haglund, “Did You See This? Downton Abbey Anachronisms” (Slate, Feb. 9, 2012)

Ben Zimmer, a Slate contributor, has created a video for the website he executive produces, the Visual Thesaurus, detailing all the seeming linguistic anachronisms from Season 2 of the show, from “just saying” to “I couldn’t care less.” See them all below, and check out the Visual Thesaurus in the days ahead for explanations as to why these uses of language are probably historically inaccurate.

Read the rest here. (Related Word Routes column, Boston Globe column)

Judy Berman “Video of the Day: Verbal Anachronisms in ‘Downton Abbey’” (Flavorwire, Feb. 9, 2012)

When it comes to World War I-era verisimilitude, Downton Abbey sure looks authentic. But what about the dialogue? We’ve certainly caught the characters using phrases that sound awfully contemporary — and we’re not the only ones. Linguist and writer Ben Zimmer has also noticed some anachronistic usages on the show, from “I’m just sayin’” to the use of “contact” as a verb, and has made a short video compiling his observations. For those who are curious to hear more about language on Downton, Zimmer will be discussing it in both the Boston Globe and in his Visual Thesaurus column, “Word Routes.”

(Related Word Routes column)

Interview on NPR’s “Morning Edition” about the impact that Charles Dickens had on the English language. (Feb. 7, 2012)

Dickens’ novels often had more than 100 characters — major and minor — each with their portraits vividly painted — each with their own characteristic manner of speaking. Ben Zimmer of Visual Thesaurus wrote a birthday column calling attention to commonly used names and expressions that had their origins in Dickens: We call a miserly person a “Scrooge”; we refer to grouches who say “bah humbug”; and in Bleak House, it’s Mr. Snagsby who uses the expression “not to put too fine a point on it.”

(Show page, audio, related Word Routes column)

Michael Hirsh, “Gingrich Goes Grandiose… What That Tells Us About Him” (National Journal, Jan. 26, 2012)

There is something quintessentially Newtish about Gingrich’s gleeful embrace of the word “grandiose” on the campaign trail in Florida today. … But in running with the word, Gingrich is also willfully ignoring its pejorative sense –which has gradually come to be the more accepted connotation, says Ben Zimmer, a linguist who formerly authored the “On Language” column at the New York Times and chairs the New Words Committee of the American Dialect Society.

Read the rest here.

Mallary Jean Tenore, “2011 Word of the Year Shows How Old Words Take on New Meanings” (Poynter, Jan. 9, 2012)

The American Dialect Society has chosen “occupy” as the 2011 Word of the Year. “It has taken on new parts of speech (as an imperative verb: ‘Occupy!’ or as an attributive noun: ‘the Occupy movement’) and new meanings, related to the protest movement and its style of demonstrations,” Ben Zimmer, chair of the organization’s New Words Committee, told me. “It was also remarkable how the word itself contributed to the movement’s success.”

Read the rest here.

Stephanie Gallman, “Linguists Name ‘Occupy’ as 2011’s Word of the Year” (CNN, Jan. 8, 2012)

The linguists have spoken and they have decided — “Occupy” is 2011’s word of the year.

Members of the American Dialect Society came out in record numbers to vote Friday night at the organization’s annual conference, held this year in Portland, Oregon.

“Occupy” won a runoff vote by a whopping majority, earning more votes than “FOMO” (an acronym for “Fear of Missing Out,” describing anxiety over being inundated by the information on social media) and “the 99%,” (those held to be at a financial or political disadvantage to the top moneymakers, the one-percenters).

Occupy joins previous year’s winners, “app,” “tweet,” and “bailout.”

“It’s a very old word, but over the course of just a few months it took on another life and moved in new and unexpected directions, thanks to a national and global movement,” Ben Zimmer, chair of the New Words Committee for the American Dialect Society, said in a statement.

Read the rest here.

Press release from the American Dialect Society, “‘Occupy’ is the 2011 Word of the Year” (Jan. 6, 2012)

In its 22nd annual words of the year vote, with record attendance, the American Dialect Society voted “occupy” (verb, noun, and combining form referring to the Occupy protest movement) as the word of the year for 2011.

Presiding at the Jan. 6 voting session were ADS Executive Secretary Allan Metcalf of MacMurray College, and Ben Zimmer, chair of the New Words Committee of the American Dialect Society and executive producer of the Visual Thesaurus and Vocabulary.com. Zimmer is also a language columnist for the Boston Globe.

“It’s a very old word, but over the course of just a few months it took on another life and moved in new and unexpected directions, thanks to a national and global movement,” Zimmer said. “The movement itself was powered by the word.”

Read the rest here.

Interview on Minnesota Public Radio’s “Midmorning” about the notable words of 2011. (Dec. 30, 2011)

Each year, the American Dialect Society chooses a word of the year. Lexicographers Grant Barrett and Ben Zimmer join us to discuss the year in words. Based on the American Dialect Society’s criteria what words were demonstrably new or newly popular in 2011?

(Show page, audio, related Word Routes column, Boston Globe column)

Sam Biddle, “How the Hashtag Is Ruining the English Language” (Gizmodo, Dec. 28, 2011)

The hashtag is conceptually out of bounds, being used by computer conformists without rules, sense, or intelligence, a like yknowwwww that now permeates the internet outside of the tweets it was meant to corral. It pervades Facebook, texting, Foursquare—turning into a form of “ironic metadata,” as linguist Ben Zimmer of The Visual Thesaurus labels it.

Read the rest here.