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Grant Barrett | |
---|---|
Born | 1970 (age 52–53) |
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | Columbia University |
Occupation(s) | Lexicographer, author, radio show host |
Website | grantbarrett |
Grant Barrett (born 1970) is an American lexicographer, specializing in slang, jargon and new usage, and the author and compiler of language-related books and dictionaries. He is a co-host and co-producer of the American weekly, hour-long public radio show and podcast A Way with Words. [1] [2] He has made regular appearances on Christopher Kimball's Milk Street Radio, [3] is often consulted as a language commentator, and has written for The New York Times and The Washington Post , and served as a lexicographer for Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press.
Grant holds a degree in French from Columbia University and has studied at the Université Paris Diderot and the University of Missouri-Columbia, where he was the editor in chief of the student newspaper, The Maneater (1990–91).
He was an early blogger with the website World New York, [4] which has been archived by the Library of Congress as part of its September 11 Web archive [5] to preserve the blog's collection of responses to the 9/11 attacks.
In 2007, following the retirement of Richard Lederer from the radio show A Way with Words, Barrett became a co-host and eventually a co-producer of the public radio show, which is broadcast nationally in the United States. [6] [7] [8] He co-hosts the show with writer/public speaker Martha Barnette. The caller-based radio show takes a sociolinguistic perspective towards language. [9]
Barnette, Barrett, and senior producer Stefanie Levine founded the 501(c)(3) organization Wayword, Inc., to fund and produce A Way with Words after KPBS-FM, which had originally produced it, withdrew support. [10] [11]
Barrett is the author of the books Perfect English Grammar (Zephyros Press, 2016, ISBN 978-1623157142) and The Official Dictionary of Unofficial English (McGraw Hill Professional, 2010, ISBN 0071491635 , 9780071491631).Perfect English Grammar is a 238-page book on writing and speaking the English language. [12] [13] The Official Dictionary of Unofficial English is based on his Double-Tongued Dictionary and World New York websites, and includes new and unusual words. [14]
As an editor and lexicographer, he compiled the Oxford Dictionary of American Political Slang (Oxford University Press, 2004, ISBN 0-19-517685-5), originally titled Hatchet Jobs and Hardball: The Oxford Dictionary of American Political Slang, and the award-winning web site Double-Tongued Dictionary. [15] [16] [17]
In 2008, he was an emcee in the finals of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament alongside Merle Reagle. [18]
He is the vice president of communications and technology for the American Dialect Society, a former member of the editorial review board for the academic journal American Speech , former contributor and editor of the journal's "Among the New Words" column, and a co-founder of the online dictionary Wordnik. [19] [20]
Between 2004 and 2014, Barrett created an annual words-of-the-year list which has been featured in The New York Times and The Dallas Morning News . [21] [22] [23] [24]
Barrett frequently comments on language matters in the popular press, as a radio and podcast guest, as a writer, and as a quoted source. [25] [26] [27] He has been a frequent public speaker with his radio partner and on his own, including for TEDxAmericasFinestCity in 2011 and TEDxSDSU in 2012. [28] [29]
Besides the publications given above, he has also written for The Washington Post [30] and The Malaysia Star . [31]
Rhyming slang is a form of slang word construction in the English language. It is especially prevalent among Cockneys in England, and was first used in the early 19th century in the East End of London; hence its alternative name, Cockney rhyming slang. In the US, especially the criminal underworld of the West Coast between 1880 and 1920, rhyming slang has sometimes been known as Australian slang.
Gibberish, also called jibber-jabber or gobbledygook, is speech that is nonsense: ranging across speech sounds that are not actual words, pseudowords, language games and specialized jargon that seems nonsensical to outsiders.
Feminazi is a pejorative term for feminists that was popularized by politically conservative American radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh.
A Slang is a vocabulary of an informal register, common in verbal conversation but avoided in formal writing. It also sometimes refers to the language generally exclusive to the members of particular in-groups in order to establish group identity, exclude outsiders, or both. The word itself came about in the 18th century and has been defined in multiple ways since its conception.
LOL, or lol, is an initialism for laughing out loud and a popular element of Internet slang. It was first used almost exclusively on Usenet, but has since become widespread in other forms of computer-mediated communication and even face-to-face communication. It is one of many initialisms for expressing bodily reactions, in particular laughter, as text, including initialisms for more emphatic expressions of laughter such as LMAO and ROFL or ROTFL.
Bimbo is slang for a conventionally attractive, sexualized, naive, and unintelligent woman. The term was originally used in the United States as early as 1919 for an unintelligent or brutish man.
Susie Dent is an English lexicographer, etymologist, and media personality. She has appeared in "Dictionary Corner" on the Channel 4 game show Countdown since 1992. She also appears on 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, a post-watershed comedy version of the show.
Hip is a slang for fashionably current and in the know. To be hip is to have "an attitude, a stance" in opposition to the "unfree world", or to what is square or prude. Being hip is also about being informed about the latest ideas, styles, and developments.
A snowclone is a cliché and phrasal template that can be used and recognized in multiple variants. The term was coined as a neologism in 2004, derived from journalistic clichés that referred to the number of Inuit words for snow.
The Double-Tongued Dictionary is an online dictionary. It catalogs a growing lexicon of undocumented or under-documented words on the fringes of English, focusing on slang, jargon, and new words.
Jesse Sheidlower is a lexicographer, editor, author, and programmer. He is past president of the American Dialect Society, was the project editor of the Random House Dictionary of American Slang, and is the author of The F-Word, a history of the word "fuck"; he is also a former editor-at-large at the Oxford English Dictionary. New York Magazine named him one of the 100 smartest people in New York, and he serves as a judge for the annual "literary-celeb-studded" Council of Literary Magazines and Presses spelling bee. He is currently an adjunct assistant professor at Columbia University.
A Way with Words is an American weekly public radio program discussing the use of language in everyday life, along with linguistics, lexicology and folk etymology from a pool of listener questions from weekly callers into the program, along with a weekly word game with quiz expert and comedian John Chaneski. The program is distributed mainly for weekend airing across member stations of NPR, utilizing the Public Radio Exchange for program distribution. That week's program is then distributed weekly as a podcast on Mondays.
Meh is a colloquial interjection used as an expression of indifference or boredom. It is often regarded as a verbal equivalent of a shrug of the shoulders. The use of the term "meh" shows that the speaker is apathetic, uninterested, or indifferent to the question or subject at hand. It is occasionally used as an adjective, meaning something is mediocre or unremarkable.
Daniel Cassidy was an American writer, filmmaker, musician, and academic. He is known for his 2007 book How the Irish Invented Slang in which he suggests that many American slang words are of Irish origin. His theories have, however, not stood up to academic scrutiny and are considered factually incorrect.
A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English is a dictionary of slang originally compiled by the noted lexicographer of the English language Eric Partridge. The first edition was published in 1937 and seven editions were eventually published by Partridge. An eighth edition was published in 1984, after Partridge's death, by editor Paul Beale; in 1990 Beale published an abridged version, Partridge's Concise Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English.
Martha Barnette is an American writer, radio host, and public speaker. She is the co-host and co-producer of A Way with Words, a weekly, hour-long show about language broadcast nationally in the United States, and is the author of four books, three of them about etymology.
Bae is a slang term of endearment primarily used among youth. It came into widespread use around 2013 and 2014 through social media and hip-hop and R&B lyrics. The term originated as an abbreviation of the word baby or babe. It has been suggested that the term originated as an acronym for "before anyone else," but this is unlikely; this false etymology is probably an example of a backronym.
A historical dictionary or dictionary on historical principles is a dictionary which deals not only with the latterday meanings of words but also the historical development of their forms and meanings. It may also describe the vocabulary of an earlier stage of a language's development without covering present-day usage at all. A historical dictionary is primarily of interest to scholars of language, but may also be used as a general dictionary.
Awkward turtle is a slang two-handed gesture used to silently mark a moment or situation as awkward. A number of spinoff hand gestures akin to the awkward turtle have since arisen. The gesture is likely used in most cases playfully and ironically. Some have remarked that giving the gesture is a sort of celebration of social discomfort.
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