Richard Lederer

Last updated
Richard Lederer at the 2006 Mensa World Gathering Richard Lederer at 2006 Mensa WG.jpg
Richard Lederer at the 2006 Mensa World Gathering

Richard Lederer (born May 26, 1938) is an American linguist, author, speaker, and teacher. He is best known for his books on the English language and on wordplay such as puns, oxymorons, and anagrams. [1] He has been dubbed "the Wizard of Idiom," "Attila the Pun," and "Conan the Grammarian." [2] His weekly column, "Lederer on Language," appears in the San Diego Union-Tribune and his articles are in newspapers and magazines throughout the United States including the Mensa Bulletin.

Contents

He was elected International Punster of the Year in 1989 [3] and was the 2002 recipient of the Golden Gavel of Toastmasters International. [4]

Early life and education

The youngest of five children, Lederer grew up in West Philadelphia. He graduated from Haverford College as a pre-med student. [2] He attended Harvard Law School for one year, [2] then switched to the Master of Arts in Teaching Program at Harvard University. He taught English and media at the St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire for 27 years until 1989. In 1980 he earned a PhD in Linguistics from the University of New Hampshire. His Jewish parents were from Poland and Germany, and he had a bar mitzvah. [5]

Career

He has written more than 50 books, including Anguished English books starting in 1987, Get Thee to a Punnery (1988), Crazy English (1989), [6] The Miracle of Language (1992), Amazing Words (2011), and The Joy of Names (2018).

Known as a "verbivore," a word he coined in the late 1980s, Lederer's interests include uncovering word and phrase origins, pointing out common grammatical errors and fallacies, and exploring palindromes, anagrams, and other forms of recreational wordplay.

His books about various subjects other than language include Presidential Trivia (2007), A Treasury for Cat Lovers (2009) and A Treasury for Dog Lovers (2009), The Gift of Age (2011), A Tribute to Teachers (2011), and American Trivia with Caroline McCullagh (2012).

In 1998 he and Charles Harrington Elster became the first co-hosts of the weekly radio show, A Way with Words , produced by KPBS, San Diego Public Radio, and broadcast by multiple stations throughout the United States. [7] In October 2006, Lederer retired from A Way with Words and was replaced by Grant Barrett. He continues broadcasting through regular guest appearances on several major market public and Clear-Channel commercial radio stations.

Personal life

Lederer has been married twice. He had three children with his first wife, Rhoda Spagenberg, an advertising manager for The Village Voice in New York: Howard Lederer and Annie Duke, both world-renowned poker players; and Katy Lederer, an author and poet. In 1992 he married Simone van Egeren, whom he met at a Mensa gathering. They live in San Diego, California.

Lederer makes more than a hundred appearances each year, many of them benefit performances in San Diego.

Publications

Richard Lederer has had over 50 titles published.

Books

Children's

Trivia

Puns and Jokes

Bloopers

Holiday

Language Skills

Word Games

Related Research Articles

An oxymoron is a figure of speech that juxtaposes concepts with opposite meanings within a word or in a phrase that is a self-contradiction. As a rhetorical device, an oxymoron illustrates a point to communicate and reveal a paradox. A general meaning of "contradiction in terms" is recorded by the 1902 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pun</span> Form of word play

A pun, also rarely known as paronomasia, is a form of word play that exploits multiple meanings of a term, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use of homophonic, homographic, metonymic, or figurative language. A pun differs from a malapropism in that a malapropism is an incorrect variation on a correct expression, while a pun involves expressions with multiple interpretations. Puns may be regarded as in-jokes or idiomatic constructions, especially as their usage and meaning are usually specific to a particular language or its culture.

A split infinitive is a grammatical construction in which an adverb or adverbial phrase separates the "to" and "infinitive" constituents of what was traditionally called the "full infinitive", but is more commonly known in modern linguistics as the to-infinitive. In the history of English language aesthetics, the split infinitive was often deprecated, despite its prevalence in colloquial speech. The opening sequence of the Star Trek television series contains a well-known example, "to boldly go where no man has gone before", wherein the adverb boldly was said to split the full infinitive, to go. Multiple words may split a to-infinitive, such as: "The population is expected to more than double in the next ten years."

Cunt is a vulgar word for the vulva or vagina. 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 man or woman 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.

A sniglet is an often humorous word made up to describe something for which no dictionary word exists. Introduced in the 1980s TV comedy series Not Necessarily the News, sniglets were generated and published in significant numbers, along with submissions by fans, in several books by Rich Hall, beginning with his Sniglets, Sniglets for Kids, and More Sniglets in the mid-1980s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bilingual pun</span> A pun that utilizes words or phrases from multiple languages

A bilingual pun is a pun created by a word or phrase in one language sounding similar to a different word or phrase in another language. The result of a bilingual pun is often a joke that makes sense in more than one language. A bilingual pun can be made with a word from another language that has the same meaning, or an opposite meaning.

<i>Gadsby</i> (novel) Novel by Ernest Vincent Wright that tried not to use the letter "e"

Gadsby is a 1939 novel by Ernest Vincent Wright which includes only four words that contain the letter E, the most common letter in English. A work that deliberately avoids certain letters is known as a lipogram. The plot revolves around the dying fictional city of Branton Hills, which is revitalized as a result of the efforts of protagonist John Gadsby and a youth organizer.

Fictitious or fake entries are deliberately incorrect entries in reference works such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, maps, and directories, added by the editors as copyright traps to reveal subsequent plagiarism or copyright infringement. There are more specific terms for particular kinds of fictitious entry, such as Mountweazel, trap street, paper town, phantom settlement, and nihilartikel.

A paraprosdokian is a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence, phrase, or larger discourse is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part. It is frequently used for humorous or dramatic effect, sometimes producing an anticlimax. For this reason, it is extremely popular among comedians and satirists such as Groucho Marx.

Untranslatability is the property of text or speech for which no equivalent can be found when translated into another (given) language. A text that is considered to be untranslatable is considered a lacuna, or lexical gap. The term arises when describing the difficulty of achieving the so-called perfect translation. It is based on the notion that there are certain concepts and words that are so interrelated that an accurate translation becomes an impossible task. Some writers have suggested that language carries sacred notions or is intrinsic to national identity. Brian James Baer posits that untranslatability is sometimes seen by nations as proof of the national genius. He quotes Alexandra Jaffe: "When translators talk about untranslatable, they often reinforce the notion that each language has its own 'genius', an 'essence' that naturally sets it apart from all other languages and reflects something of the 'soul' of its culture or people".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jumble</span> American word puzzle syndicated in daily newspapers

Jumble is a word puzzle with a clue, a drawing illustrating the clue, and a set of words, each of which is “jumbled” by scrambling its letters. A solver reconstructs the words, and then arranges letters at marked positions in the words to spell the answer phrase to the clue. The clue, and sometimes the illustration, provide hints about the answer phrase, which frequently uses a homophone or pun.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Logan Pearsall Smith</span> American-born British essayist and critic

Logan Pearsall Smith was an American-born British essayist and critic. Harvard and Oxford educated, he was known for his aphorisms and epigrams, and was an expert on 17th century divines. His Words and Idioms made him an authority on correct English language usage. He wrote his autobiography, Unforgotten Years, in 1938.

Trivia is information and data that are considered to be of little value. The word is derived from the Latin word triviae, meaning a place where a road split into two. It was introduced into English as the adjective trivial in the 15th and 16th centuries.

A Tom Swifty is a phrase in which a quoted sentence is linked by a pun to the manner in which it is attributed. Tom Swifties may be considered a type of wellerism. The standard syntax is for the quoted sentence to be first, followed by the description of the act of speaking, such as:

"If you want me, I shall be in the attic," said Tom, loftily.

James Davis Nicoll is a Canadian freelance game and speculative fiction reviewer, former security guard and role-playing game store owner, and also works as a first reader for the Science Fiction Book Club. As a Usenet personality, Nicoll is known for writing a widely quoted epigram on the English language, as well as for his accounts of suffering a high number of accidents, which he has narrated over the years in Usenet groups like rec.arts.sf.written and rec.arts.sf.fandom. He is now a blogger on Dreamwidth and Facebook, and an occasional columnist on Tor.com. In 2014, he started his website, jamesdavisnicoll.com, dedicated to his book reviews of works old and new; and later added Young People Read Old SFF, where his panel of younger readers read pre-1980 science fiction and fantasy, and Nicoll and his collaborators report on the younger readers' reactions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dmitri Borgmann</span> German-American author and logologist

Dmitri Alfred Borgmann was a German-American author best known for his work in recreational linguistics.

<i>Zzxjoanw</i> Fictitious entry in an encyclopedia which fooled logologists for many years

Zzxjoanw is a fictitious entry in an encyclopedia which fooled logologists for many years. It referred to a purported Māori word meaning "drum", "fife", or "conclusion".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Grant Barrett</span> American lexicographer

Grant Barrett 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. He has made regular appearances on Christopher Kimball's Milk Street Radio, 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.

An inherently funny word is a word that is humorous without context, often more for its phonetic structure than for its meaning.

Chrysti the Wordsmith is a radio program about word origins and meanings, produced at KGLT in Bozeman, Montana. The two-minute show is written and narrated by Chrysti M. Smith, who is also known as Chrysti the Wordsmith.

References

  1. Spy, Word. "aptagram - Word Spy". wordspy.com.
  2. 1 2 3 "About Richard Lederer". verbivore.com. Retrieved April 6, 2014.
  3. "P.O.T.Y. Award | O.Henry Pun-Off World Championships". 7 April 2014. Archived from the original on 7 April 2014.
  4. "Toastmasters International - Golden Gavel Recipients". 21 May 2011. Archived from the original on 21 May 2011.
  5. San Diego Jewish Journal: "Hungry for Words" by Karen Pearlman June 2010 | "The last of five children born to a Jewish mother from Poland and a Jewish father from Bavaria (and the only one in his family to become bar mitzvah)"
  6. Berthel, Ron (October 29, 1989). "Richard Lederer has fun with our crazy language". AP. The Nevada Daily Mail. Retrieved April 6, 2014.
  7. "About A Way with Words". A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language. Retrieved 2023-04-06.