David Barnhart

Last updated

David K. Barnhart (born 1941) is an American lexicographer [1] who specializes in new words. He began his career helping his father, Clarence Barnhart, edit the Thorndike-Barnhart dictionary series. [2]

In 1980 he founded Lexik House Publishers. In the 1980s Lexik House published ТРОйКА--The TROIKA Introduction to Russian Letters and sounds (c. 1980) by Reason A. Goodwin, the Dictionary of Bahamian English (c. 1982) by John A. Holm with Alison Watt Shilling, and in 1987 The Dictionary of Gambling and Gaming by Thomas L. Clark.

In 1982 he, with his father, began work on The Barnhart Dictionary Companion, a quarterly publication documenting appearance of new words, new meanings and new usages in English. [3] [4] This carries on the tradition of the Barnhart Dictionary of New English series (edited by his father, brother Robert Barnhart, and Sol Steinmetz), which was last published in 2001. He wrote Neo Words: A Dictionary of the Newest and Most Unusual Words of Our Time (1991). He created The Barnhart New-Words Concordance (1994) and its Supplement (2006), an index to the words contained in numerous new word dictionaries, which has been updated quarterly since 1994.

With Allan A. Metcalf, he wrote America in So Many Words: Words that have shaped America (1997). [5] He has worked as a teacher, lecturer, and as an expert witness reporting on usage and meaning in English words.

His collection of political words of the last couple of decades was published in December 2016. The title is Barnhart's Never-finished Political Dictionary of the 21st Century and the publisher is Lexik House Publishers (Hyde Park, N.Y.).

He is a member and past president of the Dictionary Society of North America and the International Linguistic Association. He is a member of the American Dialect Society.

Related Research Articles

<i>Oxford English Dictionary</i> Historical dictionary of the English language began in 1857

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is the principal historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP), a University of Oxford publishing house. The dictionary, which published its first edition in 1884, traces the historical development of the English language, providing a comprehensive resource to scholars and academic researchers, and provides ongoing descriptions of English language usage in its variations around the world.

Singular <i>they</i> Gender-neutral English pronoun

Singular they, along with its inflected or derivative forms, them, their, theirs, and themselves, is a gender-neutral third-person pronoun. It typically occurs with an indeterminate antecedent, in sentences such as:

Cunt is a vulgar word for the vulva. It is used in a variety of ways, including as a term of disparagement. "Cunt" is often used as a disparaging and obscene term for a woman in the United States, an unpleasant or objectionable person in the United Kingdom and Ireland, or a contemptible man in Australia and New Zealand. In Australia and New Zealand, it can also be a neutral or positive term when used with a positive qualifier. The term has various derivative senses, including adjective and verb uses.

<i>A Dictionary of Modern English Usage</i> Style guide by Henry Watson Fowler

A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926), by Henry Watson Fowler (1858–1933), is a style guide to British English usage, pronunciation, and writing. Covering topics such as plurals and literary technique, distinctions among like words, and the use of foreign terms, the dictionary became the standard for other style guides to writing in English. Hence, the 1926 first edition remains in print, along with the 1965 second edition, edited by Ernest Gowers, which was reprinted in 1983 and 1987. The 1996 third edition was re-titled as The New Fowler's Modern English Usage, and revised in 2004, was mostly rewritten by Robert W. Burchfield, as a usage dictionary that incorporated corpus linguistics data; and the 2015 fourth edition, revised and re-titled Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage, was edited by Jeremy Butterfield, as a usage dictionary. Informally, readers refer to the style guide and dictionary as Fowler's Modern English Usage, Fowler, and Fowler's.

Webster's Dictionary is any of the English language dictionaries edited in the early 19th century by Noah Webster (1758–1843), an American lexicographer, as well as numerous related or unrelated dictionaries that have adopted the Webster's name in his honor. "Webster's" has since become a genericized trademark in the United States for English dictionaries, and is widely used in dictionary titles.

<i>The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language</i> Collection of English words and their meanings, published by HarperCollins

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (AHD) is a dictionary of American English published by HarperCollins. It is currently in its fifth edition.

<i>Century Dictionary</i> English language encyclopedic dictionary by William Dwight Whitney

The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia is one of the largest encyclopedic dictionaries of the English language. It was compared favorably with the Oxford English Dictionary, and frequently consulted for more factual information than would normally be the case for a dictionary.

Henry Watson Fowler was an English schoolmaster, lexicographer and commentator on the usage of the English language. He is notable for both A Dictionary of Modern English Usage and his work on the Concise Oxford Dictionary, and was described by The Times as "a lexicographical genius".

<i>Macquarie Dictionary</i> Dictionary of Australian English

The Macquarie Dictionary is a dictionary of Australian English. It is considered by many to be the standard reference on Australian English. It also pays considerable attention to New Zealand English. Originally it was a publishing project of Jacaranda Press, a Brisbane educational publisher, for which an editorial committee was formed, largely from the Linguistics department of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. It is now published by Macquarie Dictionary Publishers, an imprint of Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd. In October 2007 it moved its editorial office from Macquarie University to the University of Sydney, and later to the Pan Macmillan offices in the Sydney central business district.

Scare quotes are quotation marks that writers place around a word or phrase to signal that they are using it in an ironic, referential, or otherwise non-standard sense. Scare quotes may indicate that the author is using someone else's term, similar to preceding a phrase with the expression "so-called"; they may imply skepticism or disagreement, belief that the words are misused, or that the writer intends a meaning opposite to the words enclosed in quotes. Whether quotation marks are considered scare quotes depends on context because scare quotes are not visually different from actual quotations. The use of scare quotes is sometimes discouraged in formal or academic writing.

<i>Websters New World Dictionary</i> American dictionary

Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language is an American dictionary published first in 1951 and since 2022 by HarperCollins Publishers.

<i>Random House Websters Unabridged Dictionary</i> American dictionary

Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary is a large American dictionary, first published in 1966 as The Random House Dictionary of the English Language: The Unabridged Edition. Edited by Editor-in-chief Jess Stein, it contained 315,000 entries in 2256 pages, as well as 2400 illustrations. The CD-ROM version in 1994 also included 120,000 spoken pronunciations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American Dialect Society</span> Society on linguistics

The American Dialect Society (ADS), founded in 1889, is a learned society "dedicated to the study of the English language in North America, and of other languages, or dialects of other languages, influencing it or influenced by it." The Society publishes the academic journal American Speech.

<i>Dictionary of American Regional English</i> Regional North American English dictionary

The Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE) is a record of American English as spoken in the United States, from its beginnings to the present. It differs from other dictionaries in that it does not document the standard language used throughout the country. Instead, it contains regional and folk speech, those words, phrases, and pronunciations that vary from one part of the country to another, or that are learned from family and friends rather than from teachers and books. For DARE, a "region" may be as small as a city or part of a city, or as large as most of the country. Humanities magazine has described it as "a bold synthesis of linguistic atlas and historical dictionary", and William Safire called it "the most exciting new linguistic project in the twentieth century".

Clarence Lewis Barnhart (1900–1993) was an American lexicographer best known for editing the Thorndike-Barnhart series of graded dictionaries, published by Scott Foresman & Co. which were based on word lists and concepts of definition developed by psychological theorist Edward Thorndike. Barnhart subsequently revised and expanded the series and with the assistance of his sons, maintaining them through the 1980s.

Robert K. Barnhart was an American lexicographer and editor of various specialized dictionaries. He was co-editor, with his father Clarence Barnhart, on some editions of the Thorndike-Barnhart dictionaries and The World Book Dictionary. With his father and Sol Steinmetz, he edited the three volumes of The Barnhart Dictionary of New English.

The World Book Dictionary is a two-volume English dictionary published as a supplement to the World Book Encyclopedia. It was originally published in 1963 under the editorship of Clarence Barnhart, who wrote definitions for the Thorndike-Barnhart graded dictionary series for children, based on the educational works of Edward Thorndike whom Clarence Barnhart had known and worked with decades before. In some editions it was called the World Book Encyclopedia Dictionary. The writing and editing of special articles was carried out by the staff of the World Book Encyclopedia. Encyclopedia staff also reviewed the work for consistency with the encyclopedia and appropriateness of its users.

Truthiness is the belief or assertion that a particular statement is true based on the intuition or perceptions of some individual or individuals, without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts. Truthiness can range from ignorant assertions of falsehoods to deliberate duplicity or propaganda intended to sway opinions.

<i>Fuck</i> English-language profanity

Fuck is an English-language profanity which often refers to the act of sexual intercourse, but is also commonly used as an intensifier or to convey disdain. While its origin is obscure, it is usually considered to be first attested to around 1475. In modern usage, the term fuck and its derivatives are used as a noun, a verb, an adjective, an interjection or an adverb. There are many common phrases that employ the word as well as compounds that incorporate it, such as motherfucker and fuck off.

Sol Steinmetz was a Hungarian American linguistics and lexicography expert who wrote extensively about etymologies, definitions and uncovered earliest recorded usages of words in English and Yiddish. A widely sought source on all things lexical, he earned recognition from William Safire in his On Language column in The New York Times Magazine in 2006 as a "lexical supermaven".

References

  1. Safire, William (2007-11-01). The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time: Wit and Wisdom from the Popular "On Language" Column in The New York Times Magazine. Simon and Schuster. pp. 199–. ISBN   9781416587408 . Retrieved 23 February 2014.
  2. Barnhart, David (2007). "A Calculus for New Words". Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America. 28 (28): 132–138. doi:10.1353/dic.2007.0009 . Retrieved 16 January 2016.
  3. "Talk of the Town". The New Yorker. March 18, 1985. p. 39. Retrieved 16 January 2016.
  4. Bernstein, Richard (April 3, 1989). "He Prowls English, Stalking New Words". New York Times. Retrieved 16 January 2016.
  5. Metcalf, Allan; Barnhart, David K. (13 September 1999). America in So Many Words: Words That Have Shaped America. HarperCollins. ISBN   0547563299 . Retrieved 16 January 2016.