| Now , have any of y'all ever looked up this word ? You know , in a dictionary ? ( Laughter ) Yeah , that 's what I thought . How about this word ? Here , I 'll show it to you : Lexicography : the practice of compiling dictionaries . Notice -- we 're very specific . That word " compile . " The dictionary is not carved out of a piece of granite , out of a lump of rock . It 's made up of lots of little bits . It 's little discrete -- that 's spelled D-I-S-C-R-E-T-E -- bits . And those bits are words . Now one of the perks of being a lexicographer -- besides getting to come to TED -- is that you get to say really fun words , like lexicographical . Lexicographical has this great pattern -- it 's called a double dactyl . And just by saying double dactyl , I 've sent the geek needle all the way into the red . But " lexicographical " is the same pattern as " higgledy-piggledy . " Right ? It 's a fun word to say , and I get to say it a lot . Now , one of the non-perks of being a lexicographer is that people do n't usually have a kind of warm , fuzzy , snuggly image of the dictionary . Right ? Nobody hugs their dictionaries . But what people really often think about the dictionary is , they think more like this . Just to let you know , I do not have a lexicographical whistle . But people think that my job is to let the good words make that difficult left hand turn into the dictionary , and keep the bad words out . But the thing is , I do n't want to be a traffic cop . For one thing , I just do not do uniforms . And for another -- deciding what words are good and what words are bad is actually not very easy . And it 's not very fun . And when parts of your job are not easy or fun , you kind of look for an excuse not to do them . So if I had to think of some kind of occupation as a metaphor for my work , I would much rather be a fisherman . I wanna throw my big net into the deep blue ocean of English and see what marvelous creatures I can drag up from the bottom . But why do people want me to direct traffic , when I would much rather go fishing ? Well , I blame the Queen . Why do I blame the Queen ? Well , first of all , I blame the Queen because it 's funny . But secondly , I blame the Queen because dictionaries have really not changed . Our idea of what a dictionary is has not changed since her reign . The only thing Queen Victoria would not be amused by in modern dictionaries is our inclusion of the F-word , which has happened in American dictionaries since 1965. So , there 's this guy , right ? Victorian era . James Murray , first editor of the Oxford English Dictionary . I do not have that hat . I wish I had that hat . So he 's really responsible for a lot of what we consider modern in dictionaries today . When a guy who looks like that -- in that hat -- is the face of modernity , you have a problem . And so , James Murray could get a job on any dictionary today . There 'd be virtually no learning curve . And of course , a few of us are saying : Computers ! Computers ! What about computers ? The thing about computers is -- I love computers . I mean , I 'm a huge geek , I love computers . I would go on a hunger strike before I let them take away Google Book Search from me . But computers do n't do much else other than speed up the process of compiling dictionaries . They do n't change the end result . Because what a dictionary is , is it 's Victorian design merged with a little bit of modern propulsion . It 's steampunk . What we have is an electric velocipede . You know , we have Victorian design with an engine on it . That 's all ! The design has not changed . And OK , what about online dictionaries , right ? Online dictionaries must be different . This is the Oxford English Dictionary Online , one of the best online dictionaries . This is my favorite word , by the way : Erinaceous : Pertaining to the hedgehog family ; of the nature of a hedgehog . Very useful word . So look at that . Online dictionaries right now are paper thrown up on a screen . This is flat . Look how many links there are in the actual entry : two ! Right ? Those little buttons -- I had them all expanded except for the date chart . So there 's not very much going on here . There 's not a lot of clickiness . And in fact , online dictionaries replicate almost all the problems of print , except for searchability . And when you improve searchability , you actually take away the one advantage of print , which is serendipity . Serendipity is when you find things you were n't looking for because finding what you are looking for is so damned difficult . So -- ( Laughter ) -- now , when you think about this , what we have here is a ham butt problem . Does everyone know the ham butt problem ? Woman 's making a ham for a big family dinner . She goes to cut the butt off the ham and throw it away , and she looks at this piece of ham and she 's like , " This is a perfectly good piece of ham . Why am I throwing this away ? " She thought , " Well my mom always did this . " So she calls up Mom , and she says , " Mom , why 'd you cut the butt off the ham when you 're making a ham ? " She says , " I do n't know , my mom always did it ! " So they call Grandma , and Grandma says , " My pan was too small ! " ( Laughter ) So it 's not that we have good words and bad words -- we have a pan that 's too small ! You know , that ham butt is delicious ! There 's no reason to throw it away . The bad words -- see , when people think about a place and they do n't find a place on the map , they think , " This map sucks ! " When they find a nightspot or a bar and it 's not in the guidebook , they 're like , " Ooh , this place must be cool ! It 's not in the guidebook . " When they find a word that 's not in the dictionary , they think , " This must be a bad word . " Why ? It 's more likely to be a bad dictionary . Why are you blaming the ham for being too big for the pan ? So you ca n't get a smaller ham . The English language is as big as it is . So if you have a ham butt problem , and you 're thinking about the ham butt problem , the conclusion it leads you to is inexorable and counter-intuitive : paper is the enemy of words . How can this be ? I mean , I love books . I really love books . Some of my best friends are books . But the book is not the best shape for the dictionary . Now they 're gonna think " Oh , boy . People are gonna take away my beautiful , paper dictionaries ? " No. There will still be paper dictionaries . When we had cars -- when cars became the dominant mode of transportation , we did n't round up all the horses and shoot them . You know , there 're still gonna be paper dictionaries , but it 's not going to be the dominant dictionary . The book-shaped dictionary is not going to be the only shape dictionaries come in . And it 's not going to be the prototype for the shapes dictionaries come in . So think about it this way : if you 've got an artificial constraint , artificial constraints lead to arbitrary distinctions and a skewed worldview . What if biologists could only study animals that made people go , " Aww . " Right ? What if we made aesthetic judgments about animals , and only the ones we thought were cute were the ones that we could study ? We 'd know a whole lot about charismatic megafauna , and not very much about much else . And I think this is a problem . I think we should study all the words , because when you think about words , you can make beautiful expressions from very humble parts . Lexicography is really more about material science . We are studying the tolerances of the materials that you use to build the structure of your expression : your speeches and your writing . And then often people say to me , " Well , OK -- how do I know that this word is real ? " They think , " OK , if we think words are the tools that we use to build the expressions of our thoughts , how can you say that screwdrivers are better than hammers ? How can you say that a sledgehammer is better than a ball-peen hammer ? They 're just the right tool for the job . " And so people say to me , " How do I know if a word is real ? " You know , anyone that 's read a children 's book knows that love makes things real . If you love a word , use it . That makes it real . Being in the dictionary is an artificial distinction . It does n't make a word any more real than any other way . If you love a word , it becomes real . So if we 're not worrying about directing traffic , if we 've transcended paper , if we are worrying less about control and more about description , then we can think of the English language as being this beautiful mobile . And any time one of those little parts of the mobile changes , is touched -- any time you touch a word , you use it in a new context , you give it a new connotation , you verb it -- you make the mobile move . You did n't break it ; it 's just in a new position , and that new position can be just as beautiful . Now , if you 're no longer a traffic cop -- the problem with being a traffic cop is there can only be so many traffic cops in any one intersection , or the cars get confused . Right ? But if your goal is no longer to direct the traffic , but maybe to count the cars that go by , then more eyeballs are better . You can ask for help ! If you ask for help , you get more done . And we really need help . Library of Congress : 17 million books . Of which half are in English . If only one out of every 10 of those books had a word that 's not in the dictionary in it , that would be equivalent to more than two unabridged dictionaries . And I find an un-dictionaried word -- a word like " un-dictionaried , " for example -- in almost every book I read . What about newspapers ? Newspaper archive goes back to 1759. 58.1 million newspaper pages . If only one in 100 of those pages had an un-dictionaried word on it , it would be an entire other OED . That 's 500,000 more words . So that 's -- that 's a lot . And I 'm not even talking about magazines , I 'm not talking about blogs -- and I find more new words on BoingBoing in a given week than I do Newsweek or Time . There 's a lot going on there . And I 'm not even talking about polysemy , which is the greedy habit some words have of taking more than one meaning for themselves . So if you think of the word " set " -- a set can be a badger 's burrow , a set can be one of the pleats in an Elizabethan ruff -- and there 's one numbered definition in the OED . The OED has 33 different numbered definitions for set . Tiny little word , 33 numbered definitions . One of them is just labeled " miscellaneous technical senses . " Do you know what that says to me ? That says to me it was Friday afternoon and somebody wanted to go down the pub . That 's a lexicographical cop out , to say , " miscellaneous technical senses . " So we have all these words , and we really need help ! And the thing is , we could ask for help -- asking for help 's not that hard . I mean , lexicography is not rocket science . See , I just gave you a lot of words and a lot of numbers , and this is more of a visual explanation . If we think of the dictionary as being the map of the English language , these bright spots are what we know about and the dark spots are where we are in the dark . If that was the map of all the words in American English , we do n't know very much . And we do n't even know the shape of the language . If this was the dictionary -- if this was the map of American English -- look , we have a kind of lumpy idea of Florida , but there 's no California ! We 're missing California from American English . We just do n't know enough , and we do n't even know we 're missing California . We do n't even see that there 's a gap on the map . So again , lexicography is not rocket science . But even if it were , rocket science is being done by dedicated amateurs these days. You know ? It ca n't be that hard to find some words ! So , enough scientists in other disciplines are really asking people to help , and they 're doing a good job of it . For instance : there 's eBird , where amateur birdwatchers can upload information about their bird sightings . And then ornithologists can go and help track populations , migrations , et cetera . And there 's this guy Mike Oates . Mike Oates lives in the U. K. He 's a director of an electroplating company . He 's found more than 140 comets . He 's found so many comets , they named a comet after him . It 's kind of out past Mars -- it 's a hike . I do n't think he 's getting his picture taken there anytime soon . But he found 140 comets without a telescope . He downloaded data from the NASA SOHO satellite , and that 's how he found them . If we can find comets without a telescope , should n't we be able to find words ? Now , y'all know where I 'm going with this . Because I 'm going to the Internet , which is where everybody goes . And the Internet is great for collecting words , because the Internet 's full of collectors . And this is a little-known technological fact about the Internet , but the Internet is actually made up of words and enthusiasm . And words and enthusiasm actually happen to be the recipe for lexicography . Is n't that great ? So there are a lot of really good word-collecting sites out there right now , but the problem with some of them is that they 're not scientific enough . They show the word , but they do n't show any context : Where did it come from ? Who said it ? What newspaper was it in ? What book ? Because a word is like an archaeological artifact . If you do n't know the provenance or the source of the artifact , it 's not science -- it 's a pretty thing to look at . So a word without its source is like a cut flower . You know -- it 's pretty to look at for a while , but then it dies . It dies too fast . So this whole time I 've been saying , " The dictionary , the dictionary , the dictionary , the dictionary . " Not " a dictionary , " or " dictionaries . " And that 's because -- well , people use the dictionary to stand for the whole language . They use it synecdochically -- and one of the problems of knowing a word like " synecdochically " is that you really want an excuse to say synecdochically . This whole talk has just been an excuse to get me to the point where I could say synecdochically to all of you . So I 'm really sorry . But when you use a part of something -- like the dictionary is a part of the language , or a flag stands for the United States , a symbol of the country -- then you 're using it synecdochically . But the thing is , we could make the dictionary the whole language . If we get a bigger pan , then we can put all the words in . We can put in all the meanings . Does n't everyone want more meaning in their lives ? And we can make the dictionary not just be a symbol of the language -- we can make it be the whole language . You see , what I 'm really hoping for is that my son -- who turns seven this month -- I want him to barely remember that this is the form factor that dictionaries used to come in . This is what dictionaries used to look like . I want him to think of this kind of dictionary as an eight-track tape . It 's a format that died because it was n't useful enough . It was n't really what people needed . And the thing is , if we can put in all the words , no longer have that artificial distinction between good and bad , we can really describe the language like scientists . We can leave the aesthetic judgments to the writers and the speakers . If we can do that , then I can spend all my time fishing and I do n't have to be a traffic cop anymore . Thank you very much for your kind attention . |