If you’ve been reading my blog for a while you will have seen a couple mentions of a past time I very much enjoy: dictionary tag. Below you will find a delightful lecture from the TED Talks series, in which lexicographer Erin McKean looks at the nature of the dictionary, where it’s going, and the job of a lexicographer – what people think it is and what it ought to be.
Parental advisory: Part of this talk discusses the judgements we make about words (”good” vs “bad” words.) There is a reference made to the “f” word” (it’s not spoken, though) and I believe one other mild curse word.
Advisory for proponents of the Queen’s English: You may be put off by the speaker’s unwillingness to play traffic cop!
Everyone else: By the end of the video you will know (if you don’t already) what erinaceous means. Enjoy!! 
This work was created by Ruby of Freehold 2, and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License.
Excerpts copyright quoted authors. Please visit their sites to read more, and respect the terms of their copyrights. Thanks!
Filed under: Education, Education Reform, Home Education, Humour, Language Arts, Lifelong Learning, Resources, Video and Sound, technology | Tagged: dictionaries, dictionary, Dictionary Evangelist, Education, grammar, home based education, home-schooling, homed education, homelearners, homeschooling, language, lexicography, linguistics, standard English, TED Talks
OMG, she was crackin’ me up!!
Thanks for sharing this…it was fantastic!
[...] of Dictionary Evangelist Erin McKean, whom you will have “met” if you watched her TED Talk and her longer Google TechTalk posted at the Freehold earlier. Inspired by the story of a writer [...]