Bryan Garner posted two photographs — one, two — of the paper slips used by lexicographers at work on the Oxford English Dictionary. In other words, they still use paper slips.
Re: the second photograph: extra credit if you can decipher the word without reading the whole slip. (I couldn’t).
You can see slips from the early days of the OED here.
Wednesday, August 7, 2013
Twenty-first-century OED slips
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Quite the loopy "r" in that person's handwriting. Unpacking my immediate reactions: "-gnaik" ...maybe a Greek stem? "kaon" alt. for koan?
ReplyDeleteWell no, of course. Ahh, antiquark—which, I think, still leaves a little room for Zen.
I bet you've already read The Professor and the Madman?
I thought -gnaik too.
ReplyDeleteI have a copy (somewhere), but a book I’m closer to is Caught in the Web of Words, by K.M. Elisabeth Murray, James Murray’s granddaughter.
Aunty Quark quixotic spins
ReplyDeleteQuarkotic is Quick Aunty.
Thanks for the wordplay, Anon.
ReplyDelete