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
Click here to view the embedded video.
Reflections in the Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus
Click here to view the embedded video.
The Use and Abuse of a Thesaurus
Click here to view the embedded video.
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.
Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only language, lexicography, word, etymology, and dictionary articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.
View more about this book on the 
By Michelle Rafferty
127 years ago today the Oxford English Dictionary published its first volume (A to ANT), so I thought I’d pay tribute with the story of how I recently learned the word “shibboleth”:
While rubbing elbows with fancy people at the recent OED re-launch party, I had the chance to meet contributors Matt Kohl and Katherine Connor Martin. Naturally the topic of conversation came to words, and I brought up one I had been using a lot lately: frak (the fictional version of “fuck” on Battlestar Galactica). I explained that I just started watching the show (better late than never, no?) and had been testing “frak” out in conversation to pick up other fans. Matt said, oh that’s a “shibboleth.”
A whateth? According to the OED:
The Hebrew word used by Jephthah as a test-word by which to distinguish the fleeing Ephraimites (who could not pronounce the sh) from his own men the Gileadites (Judges xii. 4–6).
Matt told me that he had first heard the word on The West Wing. Martin Sheen sums it up nicely: a password. A more recent sense in the OED defines shibboleth as:
A catchword or formula adopted by a party or sect, by which their adherents or followers may be discerned, or those not their followers may be excluded.
The sect, in my case, is Battlestar enthusiasts. I e-mailed Katherine later for more examples. She said:
I think politics affords some good examples. The pro-life movement is distinguishable by its use of certain buzz-words (abortionist, abortion-doctor, etc.), and the pro-choice movement by terms like “anti-choice”. Republicans use the word “democrat” as an adjective, while Democrats use the adjective “democratic”. If you ever hear someone talk about the “Democrat Party” on cable TV, you can be sure s/he is a conservative.
Shibboleth, it’s frakking everywhere!
(Thank you to Matt and Katherine for your countless hours spent keeping the OED alive, and for helping me realize the educational value of my addiction.)
"Let's get he frak outta here!" -Kara Thrace, S4E7
By Katherine van Wormer
She had no children, but for those of us who are social workers, she was the mother of us all. The social action focus, empathy with people in poverty, campaigning for human rights—these priorities of social work had their origins in the work and teachings of Jane Addams. Unlike the “friendly visitors” before her, Addams came to realize, in her work with immigrants and the poor, that poverty stems not from character defects but from social conditions that need to be changed. From the vantage point of the Chicago Hull House, the most famous settlement house of her day, Addams addressed such issues as political corruption, child labor, urban sanitation, women’s suffrage, and race relations. “We don’t expect to change human nature,” she said, “we people of peace, but we do expect to change human behavior.”
By the turn of the last century Jane Addams was the most famous woman in America. By the culmination of her career in 1931, she was awarded the Nobel Prize for her efforts for her international work following the destruction of World War I. But during a major part of her life, she was neither honored nor beloved.
Because of her staunch pacifism during World War I—a position which branded her a subversive and radical for the rest of her life—Addams rapidly fell out of favor. Just as she had been universally acclaimed prior to the war, Addams experienced a fall from grace unparalleled among public figures in U.S. history. She was hounded by the FBI. She was even given the dubious honor of having been given a life membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution and then subsequently to be expelled.
“If you are different from others, you need to act on that difference, if society is to advance.” This statement by Jane Addams succinctly sums up her life. Her award of the Nobel Peace Prize at the age of 71 was a proud moment for social workers, Quakers, and women the world over. The story of Jane Addams is one that can inspire us all.
Katherine van Wormer is Professor of Social Work at the University of Northern Iowa. She is also the author of Human Behavior and the Social Environment: Individuals and Families and co-author Human Behavior and the Social Environment: Groups, Communities, and Organizations.
For further reading:
Encyclopedia of Social Work
American National Biography Online
Chicago Tribune
