Catalog Search Results
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Stamper explains why the small words are the most difficult to define, how it can take nine months to define a single word, and how our biases about language and pronunciation can have tremendous social influence. Throughout Stamper brings to life the hallowed halls (and highly idiosyncratic cubicles) of Merriam-Webster, a surprisingly rich world inhabited by quirky and erudite individuals who quietly shape the way we communicate.
Author
Publisher
Open Letter
Pub. Date
2011.
Edition
First U.S. edition.
Physical Desc
254 pages ; 22 cm
Language
English
Description
"A middle-aged lexicographer, Helena Verbloem, travels alone to Durban to assist in the creation of a dictionary of Afrikaans words that have fallen out of use. Shortly after her arrival, her apartment is burglarized, and her collection of precious shells, shells that she had been collecting for a lifetime, is stolen. Meeting with indifference from the local police, she decides to investigate the crime on her own, with the help of her new friend from...
Author
Pub. Date
2023.
Language
English
Description
For the first time ever, this thrilling literary detective story, doubling as a celebration of words, language, people and one of mankind's greatest achievements, unravels the mystery of the contributors from around the world who, for over seventy years, helped to codify the way we read, write and speak.
Author
Language
English
Description
Motherless, Esme spends her childhood in the Scriptorium, a garden shed in Oxford where her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. One day a slip of paper containing the word bondmaid flutters beneath the table. She rescues the slip, and is told that the word means "slave girl." Learning that words relating to women's and common folks' experiences often go unrecorded, Esme begins...
Author
Publisher
Bantam Books Trade Paperbacks
Pub. Date
[2011]
Physical Desc
270 pages ; 21 cm
Language
English
Description
Taking a lighthouse keeper job in North Carolina to escape painful memories of the husband and son she lost, lexicographer Abigail Harker is embraced by colorful locals in the course of a summer marked by a sunken ship, a possible romance, and a series of suspicious fires.
Author
Publisher
AmazonCrossing
Pub. Date
2017.
Physical Desc
212 pages ; 21 cm
Language
English
Description
"Inspired as a boy by the multiple meanings to be found for a single word in the dictionary, Kohei Araki is devoted to the notion that a dictionary is a boat to carry us across the sea of words. But after thirty-seven years creating them at Gembu Books, it's time for him to retire and find his replacement. He discovers a kindred spirit in Mitsuya Majime--a young, disheveled square peg with a penchant for collecting antiquarian books and a background...
Author
Publisher
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Pub. Date
2012.
Physical Desc
32 pages : color illustrations ; 22 x 29 cm.
Language
English
Description
A portrait of the man who wrote the first U.S. dictionary traces his youth as a bookish Connecticut farm boy and his twenty-year effort to write the all-American dictionary that was published in 1828 when he was seventy years old.
Author
Publisher
Graywolf Press
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Gretel, a lexicographer by trade, grew up on a houseboat with her mother, wandering the canals of Oxford and speaking a private language of their own invention. Her mother disappeared when Gretel was a teen, abandoning her to foster care, and Gretel has tried to move on, spending her days updating dictionary entries. When her mother phones, Gretel will have to recover buried memories of her final, fateful winter on the canals. A runaway boy had found...
Author
Publisher
Calkins Creek
Pub. Date
[2009]
Edition
First edition.
Physical Desc
40 pages : color illustrations ; 27 cm
Language
English
Description
This book is an exploration of the life and work of Noah Webster, which discusses his promotion of a living American language and universal education for all, career as a newspaper publisher, and creation of America's first insurance company.
Author
Publisher
G.P. Putnam's Sons
Pub. Date
[2010]
Physical Desc
xii, 355 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm
Language
English
Description
Noah Webster's name is now synonymous with the dictionary he created, but his story is not nearly so well known. Webster hobnobbed with various Founding Fathers and was a young confidant of George Washington and Ben Franklin. He started America's first daily newspaper, predating Alexander Hamilton's New York Post. His "blue-backed speller" for schoolchildren sold millions of copies and influenced early copyright law. But perhaps most important, Webster...
18) The word detective: searching for the meaning of it all at the Oxford English Dictionary : a memoir
Author
Publisher
Basic Books
Pub. Date
[2016]
Physical Desc
xvi, 364 pages ; 25 cm
Language
English
Description
"What do you call the part of a dog's back it can't scratch? Can you drink a glass of balderdash? And if, serendipitously, you find yourself in Serendip, then where exactly are you? The answers to all of these questions can be found in the Oxford English Dictionary, the definitive record of the English language. And there is no better guide to the dictionary's many wonderments, its quirks, and its quiddities than the former chief editor of the OED,...
Author
Publisher
Eerdmans Books for Young Readers
Pub. Date
2014.
Physical Desc
1 volume (unpaged) : color illustrations ; 29 cm
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
The story of "shy young Peter Mark Roget, [for whom] books were the best companions--and it wasn't long before Peter began writing his own book. But he didn't write stories; he wrote lists. Peter took his love for words and turned it to organizing ideas and finding exactly the right word to express just what he thought. His lists grew and grew, eventually turning into one of the most important reference books of all time"--Amazon.com.
Author
Language
English
Description
"Peter Winceworth, a disaffected Victorian lexicographer, inserts false entries into a dictionary - violating and subverting the dictionary's authority - in an attempt to assert some sense of individual purpose and artistic freedom. In the present day, Mallory, a young overworked and underpaid intern employed by the dictionary's publishing house, is tasked with uncovering these entries before the work is digitised. As the novel progresses and their...
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