The World in Time

Kory Stamper

Friday, June 23, 2017

Lexicographers write and edit dictionaries, and while they’re becoming a rare breed, language—ever evolving—is a growth industry. There are only some fifty full-time lexicographers in the U.S. They spend their time reading, writing, and synthesizing the words we use, eschew, and transform.

 

Lewis Lapham talks with Kory Stamper, lexicographer at Merriam-Webster and the author of Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries.

 

Thanks to our generous donors. Lead support for this podcast has been provided by Lisette Prince through the EJMP Fund for Philanthropy. Additional support was provided by James J. “Jimmy” Coleman Jr.

Discussed in this episode

Cover of Word by Word

More Podcasts

May 04, 2018

The World in Time:

Susan Dunn

Lewis H. Lapham talks with Susan Dunn, author of A Blueprint for War: FDR and the Hundred Days That Mobilized America. More

October 28, 2022

The World in Time:

Stacy Schiff

Lewis H. Lapham speaks with the author of The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams. More

Representation du feu terrible a Nouvelle Yorck, c. 1778, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

January 19, 2018

The World in Time:

Holger Hoock

Lewis H. Lapham talks with Holger Hoock, author of Scars of Independence: America’s Violent Birth, at a New York Public Library event.  More

May 13, 2022

The World in Time:

Richard Cohen

Lewis H. Lapham speaks with the author of Making History: The Storytellers Who Shaped the Past. More

The Country School, by Winslow Homer, 1871.

November 13, 2020

The World in Time:

Derek W. Black

Lewis H. Lapham speaks with the author of Schoolhouse Burning: Public Education and the Assault on American Democracy. More