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Guilty by definition : a novel / by Dent, Susieauthor.;
"After a decade spent living abroad, Martha has returned to her father, her home, and the city whose institutions have defined her family. But the ghosts she had thought to be at rest seem to have been waiting for her to return. When an anonymous letter is delivered to the Clarendon English Dictionary, it puzzles the team of lexicographers working there. It soon becomes clear that this is not the usual eccentric enquiry. The letter hints at secrets, lies, and a particular year. For Martha Thornhill, the new Senior Editor, the date can mean only one thing: the summer her brilliant, beautiful older sister, Charlie, went missing. When more letters arrive and the team pulls apart the clues within them, the questions become more insistent and troubling. Charlie had been keeping a powerful secret, but as the mystery of her disappearance starts to unravel, someone is trying to lead the lexicographers to the truth, while another is desperate to keep it buried" --
Subjects: Detective and mystery fiction.; Novels.; Lexicographers; Missing persons; Siblings;
Available copies: 3 / Total copies: 21
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The dictionary of lost words [sound recording] : a novel / by Williams, Pip.;
Prologue: February 1886 --Part 1: 1887-1896. Batten-distrustful --Part 2: 1897-1901. Lap-nywe --Part 4: 1907-1913. Polygenus-sorrow --Part 5: 1914-1915. Speech-sullen --Part 6: 1928. Wise-wyzen --Epilogue: Adelaide, 1989."The Dictionary of Lost Words is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical figures, are products of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Before the lost word, there was another. It arrived at the Scriptorium in a second-hand envelope, the old address crossed out and Dr Murray, Sunnyside, Oxford, written in its place. It was Da's job to open the post and mine to sit on his lap, like a queen on her throne, and help him ease each word out of its folded cradle. He'd tell me what pile to put it on and sometimes he'd pause, cover my hand with his, and guide my finger up and down and around the letters, sounding them into my ear. He'd say the word, and I would echo it, then he'd tell me what it meant".
Subjects: Lexicographers -- Fiction.; New English dictionary on historical principles -- Fiction.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The right word : Roget and his thesaurus / by Bryant, Jen,1960-author.(CARDINAL)203661; Sweet, Melissa,1956-illustrator.(CARDINAL)269990;
Includes bibliographical references.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.590LAccelerated Reader ARCaldecott Honor Book.The Robert F. Sibert Medal.
Subjects: Biographies.; Roget, Peter Mark, 1779-1869.; Roget, Peter Mark, 1779-1869; Thesaurus of English words and phrases (Roget, Peter Mark).; Lexicographers; Lexicographers; Philologists; Philologists;
Available copies: 57 / Total copies: 66
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Noah Webster, master of words / by Collins, David R.(CARDINAL)509338;
Bibliography: page.A biography of the teacher who authored the first dictionary written in the United States.
Subjects: Biographies.; Webster, Noah, 1758-1843; Lexicographers; Educators; Lexicographers; Teachers;
Available copies: 2 / Total copies: 2
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Noah Webster / by Morgan, John S.,1921-(CARDINAL)122213;
Bibliography: pages 206-210.
Subjects: Biographies.; Webster, Noah, 1758-1843.; Lexicographers; Educators;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Perfect pitch : a life story / by Slonimsky, Nicolas,1894-1995.(CARDINAL)123668;
Subjects: Autobiographies.; Slonimsky, Nicolas, 1894-1995.; Lexicographers; Musicians;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The life of Samuel Johnson / by Boswell, James,1740-1795.;
Includes bibliographical references (page xxxiv-xxxvii) and index.
Subjects: Biographies.; Johnson, Samuel, 1709-1784.; Authors, English; Lexicographers;
Available copies: 2 / Total copies: 2
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Dr. Sam: Johnson, detector; being a light-hearted collection of recently reveal'd episodes in the career of the great lexicographer narrated as from the pen of James Boswell ... / by De La Torre, Lillian,1902-1993.(CARDINAL)168948;
Subjects: Fiction.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
On-line resources: Suggest title for digitization;
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Word by word : the secret life of dictionaries / by Stamper, Kory,author.(CARDINAL)414521;
Includes bibliographical references (pages 265-280) and index.Hrafnkell: on falling in love -- But: on grammar -- It's: on "grammar" -- Irregardless: on wrong words -- Corpus: on collecting the bones -- Surfboard: on defining -- Pragmatic: on examples -- Take: on small words -- Bitch: on bad words -- Posh: on etymology and linguistic originalism -- American dream: on dates -- Nuclear: on pronunciation -- Marriage: on authority and the dictionary -- Epilogue: the damnedest thing.Brimming with intelligence and personality, a vastly entertaining account of how dictionaries are made - a must read for word mavens. Have you ever tried to define the word "is?" Do you have strong feelings about the word (and, yes, it is a word) "irregardless?" Did you know that OMG was first used in 1917, in a letter to Winston Churchill? These are the questions that keep lexicographers up at night. While most of us might take dictionaries for granted, the process of writing dictionaries is in fact as lively and dynamic as language itself. With sharp wit and irreverence, Kory Stamper cracks open the complex, obsessive world of lexicography, from the agonizing decisions about what and how to define, to the knotty questions of usage in an ever-changing language. She 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. A sure delight for all lovers of words, Harmless Drudges will also improve readers' grasp and use of the English language.1170L
Subjects: Biographies.; Encyclopedias and dictionaries; Lexicographers; Lexicography;
Available copies: 17 / Total copies: 18
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Hardly harmless drudgery : a 500-year pictorial history of the lexicographic geniuses, sciolists, plagiarists & obsessives who defined the English language / by Garner, Bryan A.,author.(CARDINAL)187584; Lynch, Jack(John T.),author.(CARDINAL)659981;
Includes bibliographical references and index.Primordial beginnings -- A kind of dawning -- The conventional start -- The early 18th century -- The age of authority -- Linguistic independence & its sequelae -- Lexical warfare -- The OED era -- What's a guardian to do? -- Offbeat English -- The digital age."An illustrated history of the dictionary and the many obsessed compilers, charlatans, and geniuses, who made them. Dictionaries are repositories of erudition, monuments to linguistic authority, and battlefields in cultural and political struggles. They are works of almost superhuman endurance, produced by people who devote themselves for years or even decades to wearisome labor. Dictionaries can become commodities in a fiercely competitive publishing business, and they can keep a business afloat for generations or sink it swiftly. They are also often beautiful objects: typographically innovative, designed to project learning and authority. The painstaking work of corralling, recording, and defining the vocabulary of a language has inspired best-selling books, both fiction and nonfiction, and even two major motion pictures. This is the dictionary's story. The book tells the stories behind great works of scholarship but, more important, it tells the stories of the people behind them-their prodigious endurance, their nationalist fervor, their philological elucubrations haphazardly mixed with crackpot theories, their petty rivalries, and their sometimes irrational conduct and visceral hatreds. Most of Hardly Harmless Drudgery will be a chronological narrative, covering more than half a millennium from the late 15th century to the early 21st. This main chronological narrative will occasionally pause for digressions on the themes and questions that arise throughout the history of lexicography. Endurance and delayed gratification, for instance, are necessary virtues for any successful lexicographer. Samuel Johnson, working with the aid of only a few copyists, did in 9 years what the 40 "immortels" of l'Académie française could not do in less than 40. And the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary contains roughly 38 million words of text-about 50 times the length of the King James Bible. Not that publishers always welcome such large and slow-moving projects. The OED was supposed to be a 4-volume work, produced in a decade, but it turned into 13 volumes published over half a century, and it required the invention of crowdsourcing in the Victorian era. Big reference projects are costly, and teams of experts work for years before they produce any revenue. The flagship dictionaries we admire today attract prestige but almost always lose money; publishers since the 18th century have learned that the only way to turn a profit is to spin off a series of abridgments, school texts, pocket editions, and so on. Those who master that game can survive for decades, but ruinous business deals have destroyed many fortunes-including that of Noah Webster. Today anyone can publish under the name "Webster's dictionary." Dictionaries also induce us to ask about the basis of authority. Who gets to say what is an English word and what is not, what words mean, and how words should be used? Johnson grounded his authority on the great writers in English, and the 114,000 quotations in his book make his Dictionary one of the largest anthologies of English literature ever compiled. Webster brought his own conception of great literature, imbued with a strong sense of American patriotism. The OED broadened the scope to cover what Murray called "Anglicity," a global map of the language. The nature of linguistic authority became most controversial during the dustup over Webster's Third in the early 1960s. For readers of books such as The Professor and the Madman, for bibliophiles and anyone who loves words, this story of dictionaries is enormously entertaining"--
Subjects: Illustraed works.; Informational works.; Illustrated works.; English language; English language;
Available copies: 4 / Total copies: 4
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