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How do you choose the right word? Some just don’t fit what you’re trying to convey, either in the labor of love prose for your creative writing class, or the rogue auto-correct function on your phone.

Can you shed lacerations instead of tears? How is the word barren an attack on women? How do writers such as Joshua Ferris, Francine Prose, David Foster Wallace, Zadie Smith, and Simon Winchester weigh and inveigh against words?

We sat down with Katherine Martin and Allison Wright, editors of the Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus, to discuss what makes a word distinctive from others and what writers can teach you about language.

Writing Today, the Choice of Words, and the Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus

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Reflections in the Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus

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The Use and Abuse of a Thesaurus

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Katherine Martin is Head of US Dictionaries at Oxford University Press. Allison Wright is Editor, US Dictionaries at Oxford University Press.

Much more than a word list, the Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus is a browsable source of inspiration as well as an authoritative guide to selecting and using vocabulary. This essential guide for writers provides real-life example sentences and a careful selection of the most relevant synonyms, as well as new usage notes, hints for choosing between similar words, a Word Finder section organized by subject, and a comprehensive language guide. The third edition revises and updates this innovative reference, adding hundreds of new words, senses, and phrases to its more than 300,000 synonyms and 10,000 antonyms. New features in this edition include over 200 literary and humorous quotations highlighting notable usages of words, and a revised graphical word toolkit feature showing common word combinations based on evidence in the Oxford Corpus. There is also a new introduction by noted language commentator Ben Zimmer.

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From left to right: Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Rene Descartes, John Locke, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, G.W.F. Hegel, Arthur Schopenhauer, Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’m doing something totally different today. This afternoon I had a conversation with a fellow writer and poet. We often have philosophical discussions, and this was no exception. I’d like to recreate a small portion of our talk.

Friend: In my little “boxed” way of thinking:

1. Photographers are seekers, first and foremost

2. Graphic artists are messengers

3. Composers are messengers

4. Singers are channels

5. Actors are mirrors

Me: Yep, I agree about actors. Are writers the interpreters?

Friend: 6. Writers, in my mind, are all of the above

7. Philosophers are interpreters

Me: Ah, okay, I can go along with philosophers. So, let me spell this out differently–

Writers are the philosophers who seek, through pictures, to channel messages and hold up mirrors to their readers, so that interpretations of reality can be seen and appreciated, and a future can be built upon that foundation.

Poetry is the perfect medium in its own way. It’s short, lyrical in form and presents a message, philosophical in method and presentation, and gives the reader an entire picture, however short. And there is music in the cadence and rhythm of the lines that bring home the message.

Friend: I like it. That should be your blog post. I think of ghost writers, for example…

Me: I think on some level it is true. Even the most out-there writers, like early King or Koontz, write about people’s fears and what they’re based on. They give an opportunity to imagine the lengths to which those fears can go. I think ghost writers are even truer for the example. They channel so much of       their client, the messages they gained while working with that individual, and so on. They may be only reflecting the philosophy of the client, but the  wording, phraseology is their own, which makes or breaks the philosophy.

Friend: I suppose as writers we go “I have something to say”… that something is definitely inspired somehow. Poetry is the most compact package as far as  writing goes. It also asks a lot of the readers.

Me: Which is what all messages do.

Friend: I mean… it is a push off a cliff compared to the steady rise of a roller coaster before it crashes down. Longer writing is more like the amusemen

By Lynda Mugglestone Spin is one of those words which could perhaps now do with a bit of ‘spin’ in its own right. From its beginnings in the idea of honest labour and toil (in terms of etymology, spin descends from the spinning of fabric or thread), it has come to suggest the twisting of words rather than fibres – a verbal untrustworthiness intended to deceive and disguise. Often associated with newspapers and politicians, to use spin is to manipulate meaning, to twist truth for particular ends – usually with the aim of persuading readers or listeners that things are other than they are.

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By Dennis Baron

There’s a federal law that defines writing. Because the meaning of the words in our laws isn’t always clear, the very first of our federal laws, the Dictionary Act–the name for Title 1, Chapter 1, Section 1, of the U.S. Code–defines what some of the words in the rest of the Code mean, both to guide legal interpretation and to eliminate the need to explain those words each time they appear. Writing is one of the words it defines, but the definition needs an upgrade.

The Dictionary Act consists of a single sentence, an introduction and ten short clauses defining a minute subset of our legal vocabulary, words like person, officer, signature, oath, and last but not least, writing. This is necessary because sometimes a word’s legal meaning differs from its ordinary meaning. But changes in writing technology have rendered the Act’s definition of writing seriously out of date.

The Dictionary Act tells us that in the law, singular includes plural and plural, singular, unless context says otherwise; the present tense includes the future; and the masculine includes the feminine (but not the other way around–so much for equal protection).

The Act specifies that signature includes “a mark when the person making the same intended it as such,” and that oath includes affirmation. Apparently there’s a lot of insanity in the law, because the Dictionary Act finds it necessary to specify that “the words ‘insane’ and ‘insane person’ and ‘lunatic’ shall include every idiot, lunatic, insane person, and person non compos mentis.”

The Dictionary Act also tells us that “persons are corporations . . . as well as individuals,” which is why AT&T is currently trying to convince the Supreme Court that it is a person entitled to “personal privacy.” (The Act doesn’t specify whether “insane person” includes “insane corporation.”)

And then there’s the definition of writing. The final provision of the Act defines writing to include “printing and typewriting and reproductions of visual symbols by photographing, multigraphing, mimeographing, manifolding, or otherwise.” There’s no mention of Braille, for example, or of photocopying, or of computers and mobile phones, which seem now to be the primary means of transmitting text, though presumably they and Facebook and Twitter and all the writing technologies that have yet to appear are covered by the law’s blanket phrase “or otherwise.”

Federal law can’t be expected to keep up with every writing technology that comes along, but the newest of the six kinds of writing that the Dictionary Act does refer to–the multigraph–was invented around 1900 and has long since disappeared. No one has ever heard of multigraphing, or of manifolding, an even older and deader technology, and for most of us the mimeograph is at best a dim memory.

Congress considers writing important enough to the nation’s well-being to include it in the Dictionary Act, but not important enough to bring up to date, and now, with the 2012 election looming, no member of Congress is likely to support a revision to the current definition that is semantically accurate yet co

The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Mathematics, edited by Christopher Clapham and James Nicholson, covers both pure and applied mathematics and statistics and includes linear algebra, optimization, nonlinear equations, and differential equations.  With over 3,000 authoritative entries it is a one-stop math resource.  Since I usually don’t deal with math I thought it would be fun to excerpt some entries.  Below are some samples from the “A”, “B”, “C”, “Q”, “R”, and “S” sections.  Enjoy!

Achilles paradox: The paradox which arises from considering how overtaking takes place.  Achilles gives a tortoise a head start in a race.  To overtake, he must reach the tortoise’s initial position, then where the tortoise had moved to, and so on *ad infinitum.  The conclusion that he cannot overtake because he has to cover an infinite sum of well-defined non-zero distances is false, hence the paradox.

Break-even point: The point at which revenue begins to exceed cost.  If one graph is drawn to show total revenue plotted against the number of items made and sold and another graph is drawn with the same axes to show total costs, the two graphs normal intersect at the break-even point.  To the left of the break-even point, costs exceed revenue and the company runs at a loss while, to the right, revenue exceeds costs and the company runs at a profit.

Cuboctahedron: One of the *Archimedean solids, with 6 square faces and 8 triangular faces.  It can be formed by cutting off the corners of a cube to obtain a polyhedron whose vertices lie at the midpoints of the edges of the original cube.  It can also be formed by cutting off the corners of an *octahedron to obtain a polyhedron whose vertices lie at the midpoints of the edges of the original octahedron.

QED: Abbreviation for quod erat demonstrandum.  Latin for ‘which was to be proved’.  Often written at the end of a proof.

Radius (radii): A radius of a circle is a line segment joining the centre of the circle to a point on the circle.  All such line segments have the same length, and this length is also called the radius of the circle.  The term also applies in both senses to a sphere.

Subtraction: The mathematical operation which is the inverse operation to *addition which calculates the difference between to numbers or quantities.  So 7-2=5, and (3x+5y)-(x+2y)=2x+3y.

We are in week four of our Word Window series in which we display an Oxford Word of the Week, culled from The Oxford English Dictionary in the widows in front of our NYC office on Madison between 34th and 35th street.

Last week’s word was: Rashomon n.: Designating something resembling or suggestive of the film Rashomon, esp. in being characterized by multiple conflicting or differing versions, perspectives, or interpretations.

In case you aren’t in NYC or didn’t get a chance to walk by the office here is what it looked like:

This week’s word is: Mondegreen

Stop by the window to see its definition or check back on the blog next week!

If you have ever walked by the Manhattan office of Oxford University Press on Madison, between 34th and 35th street, you may have noticed two big windows. Periodically we change these displays to reflect current holidays or books we are particularly proud of.  Starting today and continuing for the next twelve weeks this window will display an Oxford Word of the Week, culled from The Oxford English Dictionary.  So check the blog on Mondays to discover what the “word of the week” is and then walk by the window (if you are in NYC) to read its definition. You can also visit the Oxford English Dictionary online for a definition and full history of the word’s origin.

The first word of the week is: Quiddity

by Cassie, Publicity Assistant

I recently discovered why it is that Ammon Shea loves reading dictionaries so much. They’re really a lot of fun. Of course, it helps that the dictionary I’m reading is a dictionary of slang terms from the US, Australia, and Great Britain. Being new to this dictionary-reading business, I wanted to share some of my favorite words so far. The definitions are from Stone the Crows: Oxford Dictionary of Modern Slang, by John Ayto and John Simpson. The commentary is, of course, mine.

Stone the crows was the first term I looked up, since it’s the name of the dictionary and a term I’m not at all familiar with. I found it under stone, which has several definitions. The term “stone the crows” means an exclamation of surprise, originating in Australia. Some of the other definitions of stone are as follows:

• A testicle
• A diamond
• Stone the crows
• Stone me: also an exclamation of surprise
• To become intoxicated with drink or drugs
• To make drunk or ecstatic

Quite an interesting assortment, isn’t it? The first really fun word I found on my own (at least, the first one that’s fit to use in polite company) is banger: A kiss, esp. a violent one; a sausage; an old motor vehicle, esp. one which runs noisily. Banger is fascinating because of the range in its definition. How, exactly, can one word be used for a kiss, a sausage, and an old car? Yet that’s exactly what it means. The earliest meaning of the word is a violent kiss, but that’s hardly a pleasant thought, so I’ll probably stick with the sausage definition. Maybe the next time I go to a diner, I’ll order eggs and bangers. I’m looking forward to the waiter’s blank stare already.

Some of the more interesting words are the dated ones; dated meaning they’re no longer in common use. The original term for hipster (a person who is ‘hip’) is hepster, meaning hip-cat, or, in my own terms, a person who thinks he or she is really cool. Hipster might technically make more sense as a direct derivation of hip, but I just prefer the sound of hepster. Help me bring back hepster, people!

Another slang term no longer in use is prune-picker, meaning “someone from California.” The term was only used from 1918-1929. I thought this one deserved some additional scrutiny, so I looked it up in the OED. According to the OED Online, the term came into use because of the abundance of prunes grown in California. Still, I wonder why the term died out in 1929? Perhaps with the crash of the stock market and the onset of the Great Depression, people weren’t thinking about prunes anymore. Or maybe Californians stopped growing prunes.

A handy feature of Stone the Crows is that it tells you when a word is meant to be an insult. Noun derog, meaning derogatory, precedes the definition of ambulance-chaser (a lawyer who specializes in actions for personal injuries). This feature could particularly come in handy for politicians, “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that term was offensive to [insert cultural or racial group here]!” I’m not including more of these terms because I don’t want to offend anyone. Though there are a number of interesting terms for blondes.

I’ve saved the best for last, of course. I’ll admit that I haven’t quite pulled off the trick of reading the dictionary straight through (I’ve done some jumping around), but my wandering through found this absolute gem of a word/term: noodge.

I think this is the Kevin Smith fan coming out in me, but I’m amazed to learn that this phrase (repeated quite often by Smith character Jay of Jay and Silent Bob) is a real word. Noodge means “to pester, nag” as well as “a person who complains or nags; pest.” The adjective form is noodgy. To cap it all off, it comes from the Yiddish term nudyen, meaning “to bore, pester.” How perfect is that? Jay is calling everyone around him a nag and a pest, and they all just think he’s a babbling stoner.

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Ammon Shea recently spent a year of his life reading the OED from start to finish. Over the next few months he will be posting weekly blogs about the insights, gems, and thoughts on language that came from this experience. His book, Reading the OED, will be published by Perigee in July. In the post below Ammon, an expert dictionary reader, reflects on rain.

My girlfriend Alix and I are driving across the country, as people are occasionally wont to do. I know that this particularly American rite of passage is not uncommon but it is one that I have never completed. And so even though we are not in fact driving all the way across I am nonetheless quite excited.

The weather is quite excited as well, and it chooses to make apparent this excitement by raining almost continuously as we’ve driven south and west. I love the rain, and mind its on and off-again exuberance not at all. Each fresh storm that we drive into reminds me of just how sodden English is with its own words for rain.

There are small clutches of largely archaic Scottish words that can describe a different kind of rain, and can be so much more specific than simply relying on drizzle/rain/downpour. There are words such as blirts (’a short dash of rain coming with a gust of wind’), bracks (’a sudden heavy fall of rain’), and driffle (’to rain fitfully…as at the “tail” of a shower’).

There are words for things that have been wet with rain (impluvious), and words that can describe the drip of your clothes when you’ve gotten soaked (platch).

Driving down the highway there is evidence of the rain everywhere, even in those few intervals between showers (also know as hot gleams). The clouds ahead that are dark and ponderous are imbriferous (rain-bringing) and the cars that approach on the other side of the highway and have just passed out of a storm of their own are bedrabbled (made wet or dirty with rain and mud).

There are rain words whose main function is not to describe something, but rather to arouse a vocabularian sense of whimsy, such as hyetal (of or belonging to rain).

I am sure that has hyetal many fine technical uses, but whenever I think of it I simply wonder what sort of things belong to the rain and if the rain ever gets tired of owning them.

My favorite world for rain is the one that comes to mind when we take advantage of a pluvial lull, and stop driving. When we get out of the car the smell of freshly fallen rain rising off the sidewalk and the word that describes this smell inextricably link themselves in my brain–petrichor–and I cannot tell if the word makes me like the smell or the smell makes me like the word or if it matters at all.

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Neil sends the message that due to the storm, he has no power, no phone, and a cell phone that's inching towards death. He may be out of range for days, fyi, if you're trying to phone/email.

I suppose it will be very lonely here in the meantime. You could always go hang out at the Fabulist. Or go buy that shirt you've been meaning to pick up. Or go watch Jonathan Ross make out with Neil, because really, I could watch that all day. (Jonathan's ode to masturbation just moments earlier is up now too.)

And, failing all that, here's a movie about fish.

Regards,
The Official Web Elf