OED in Sunday NY Times Magazine
Bapopik at AOL.COM
Bapopik at AOL.COM
Sun Nov 5 04:54:16 UTC 2006
_http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/05/magazine/05cyber.html_
(http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/05/magazine/05cyber.html)
...
Cyber-Neologoliferation
By _JAMES GLEICK_
(http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/james_gleick/index.html?inline=nyt-per)
Published: November 5, 2006
When I got to John Simpson and his band of lexicographers in Oxford earlier
this fall, they were working on the P’s. Pletzel, plish, pod person,
point-and-shoot, polyamorous — these words were all new, one way or another. They had
been plowing through the P’s for two years but were almost done (except that
they’ll never be done), and the Q’s will be “just a twinkle of an eye,”
Simpson said. He prizes patience and the long view. A pale, soft-spoken man of
middle height and profound intellect, he is chief editor of the Oxford English
Dictionary and sees himself as a steward of tradition dating back a century
and a half. “Basically it’s the same work as they used to do in the 19th
century,” he said. “When I started in 1976, we were still working very much on
these index cards, everything was done on these index cards.” He picked up a
stack of 6-inch-by-4-inch slips and riffled through them. A thousand of these
slips were sitting on his desk, and within a stone’s throw were millions
more, filling metal files and wooden boxes with the ink of two centuries, words,
words, words.
(...)
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