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By Dennis Baron

There’s a new breed of dictionary, untouched by human hands. The New York Times reports that teams of programmers have developed software that automates the making of dictionaries, eliminating the need for human lexicographers, who may favor some words and neglect others. These new dictionary droids comb the web, selecting words in context, defining them automatically based on that surrounding context, and tabulating the definitions and citations for subscribers to consult online. And they do it all faster than you can say Google.

The web has made possible a democratizing of the dictionary. There are no editors with their annoying biases to stand in the way, so with just a couple of clicks users can see words in their natural habitat and choose exactly which one best suits their purpose. To paraphrase the old New Yorker cartoon, on the internet, everybody’s a lexicographer.

No human dictionarian sifts through the massive online corpus to figure out the various senses and connotations of each word, its history, etymology, or pronunciation. This leaves users free to do the job of lexicography themselves. They can even assign a word to any part of speech they want, or make up a new part of speech entirely if they like. There are no usage labels warning that a particular word might not be national, current, or reputable, or that some readers might find it stuffy or offensive. And there’s no grammar nazi shaking a minatory finger and muttering, “dictionary droid ain’t a word.” I just used dictionary droid online. It will soon be collected by a dictionary droid. Ergo, dictionary droid is a word. And if you don’t know what dictionarian or minatory mean, you can find them in the OED, a dictionary compiled by all-too-fallible humans.

What would the old lexicographers think about the web’s new dictionary droids? Back in the eighteenth century, Dr. Johnson’s ’net was “any thing reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections.” That definition sounds like it was created by a droid, and if Johnson actually had to define internet today, he’d probably come up with something equally convoluted.

The nineteenth-century lexicographer Noah Webster had his own word quirks. Webster preferred bridegoom to bridegroom because it comes from the Old English word guma, meaning ‘man,’ not groom, which refers to ‘someone charged with caring for horses,’ and he wanted to respell deaf as deef, to reflect how it was pronounced by his fellow New Englanders. So I imagine Webster would have changed lots of the spellings he found online and taken out all the dirty words, which is what he did when he translated the Bible after he finished making dictionaries. Finally, James Murray, the first editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, would probably give up the 3×5 slips on which he wrote each word, together with a context illustrating it, and make a PowerPoint stack for every word instead.

Above: Dr. Johnson’s definition of network, from his Dictionary of the English Language (1755). Below: Noah Webster’s definition of bridegoom, from An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828). In 1833 Webster published his translation of the Bible, which used euphemisms instead of dirty words, “language which cannot be uttered in company without a violation of decorum,” so that women and children could

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The December 2011 robot cruise past on cross-country skis.
Prints available here.

The November 2011 is hardly recognizable in these Groucho Marx glasses and nose.
Prints available here.

The October 2011 measures the marigolds and stops to see how beautiful they are. Prints are available here.

The September 2011 has a load of books to carry. Prints are available here.

The August 2011 rolls along beneath the summer sun. Prints are available here.

The July 2011 Robot of the Month enjoys a cool frozen treat. Prints are available here.

The June 2011 Robot of the Month fries 'em sunny side up! Prints are available here.

The May 2011 Robots of the Month take shelter from a spring downpour beneath a black umbrella. Prints are available here.

The April 2011 Robot of the Month grooves to tunes under the moon. Prints are available here.

The March 2011 Robot of the Month grooves to tunes under the moon. Prints are available here.

The February 2011 Robot of the Month passing the old self-awareness test. Prints are available here.

written by Jim McCann illustrated by Janet Lee Archaia  2010 In a world, where time has stopped, populated by eleven year old children and their robot minders, comes a story of the day the men from space came to repair the damage that had been done long ago... It would be fun if I could say that this book struck a balance between Winsor McCay's Little Nemo in Slumberland and the British TV

I hope everyone enjoyed the holiday weekend!  It seems that Mother Nature decided this weekend really did herald in the autumn, as it’s drizzly and chilly in NYC today.  It turns out it’s the best weather to hunker down and catch up on blog reading.  Here are some interesting links we’ve been reading lately:

• The Book Blogger Appreciation Week 2011 shortlist just came out and CONGRATULATIONS to author Veronica Roth (DIVERGENT) for her nomination in the “Published Author Blog” category.  Thanks to Lee Wind at I’m Here, I’m Queer, What the Hell Do I Read? for the link (and congrats to his nomination as well)!
• There’s still time to have the teens in your library or classroom vote for YALSA’S Teens’ Top 10 – they have until September 16th.
• Family of robots? Bookshelves of Doom does it again: makes me laugh hysterically first thing in the morning before I’ve even had coffee.
• The time has come: awards buzz is in full effect.  Heavy Medal has started their coverage of all things Newbery.  There doesn’t appear to be a link yet, but keep an eye out for Horn Book‘s own blog, Calling Caldecott.
• Liz Burns over at A Chair, A Fireplace, and a Tea Cozy had quite the ordeal, courtesy of Hurricane Irene.  Read her story and check out her links of other bloggers with Irene stories.
• Snape voted the favorite Harry Potter character?  Really???  It’s a total upset.  Me, I’m a Hermione fan through and through.  And you?
• Sam over at Parenthetical has a fascinating blog post, “To RSS or not to RSS?”  Really?  Only 6% of North American, Internet-using consumers use an RSS feed once a week or more?  That floors me, as I couldn’t live without Google Reader to help me keep it all organized (and I couldn’t live without my Bloglines before that, nor could Liz).  What do you think?  When everyone and their brother has a blog out there, how do you keep it all organized?
• Once again, Seattle Public Library closes for a week due to budget cuts.  I think the quote at the end really gets to the crux of the problem: “You kind of take it for granted – and then suddenly you miss it when it’s gone.”
• Doing last-minute book buying for school?  Here’s a list of some back-to-school titles from the New York Times.

Have a great (short!) week, everyone, and enjoy the cooler weather!

Ro

bot post #1:

Anina Bennett wrote to share the cover to Futurama #57, a steampunk story which includes a mashup of acerbic robot Bender with historical chameleon robot Boilerplate (created by Paul Guinan and Bennett) called…Benderplate. It had to happen.

Apparently the future is now and it's library is the University of Chicago’s new Joe and Rika Mansueto Library.  You enter into a 8,000 square foot dome called the Grand Reading Room, which is nicely lit and contains a vast number of tables with chairs and computer terminals.  The thing you won't find in this dome are bookshelves. 

The books themselves are housed in an underground storage facility located directly beneath the dome, and when you want to pull one of the 3.5 million books you just make a request on your computer terminal and a computer activated robotic crane pulls the book and sends it up to the circulation desk.  The whole process apparently takes about five minutes, which should give you enough time to get up and walk to the circulation desk.  The same crane system re-shelves the book when you are finished with it too.

There are a few more details as well as a neat video showing some of the underground storage in this article from Singularity Hub