The Best Lexicography Books 2025

1. Names on the globe [Hardcover - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. intersection of names and places

Names on the globe, Used [Hardcover]

2. The Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the Encyclopedie, 1775-1800, Used [Paperback]

A great book about an even greater book is a rare event in publishing. Robert Darnton's history of the Encyclop die is such an occasion. The author explores some fascinating territory in the French genre of histoire du livre , and at the same time he tracks the diffusion of Enlightenment ideas. He is concerned with the form of the thought of the great philosophes as it materialized into books and with the way books were made and distributed in the business of publishing. This is cultural history on a broad scale, a history of the process of civilization. In tracing the publishing story of Diderot's Encyclop die , Darnton uses new sources--the papers of eighteenth-century publishers--that allow him to respond firmly to a set of problems long vexing historians. He shows how the material basis of literature and the technology of its production affected the substance and diffusion of ideas. He fully explores the workings of the literary market place, including the roles of publishers, book dealers, traveling salesmen, and other intermediaries in cultural communication. How publishing functioned as a business, and how it fit into the political as well as the economic systems of prerevolutionary Europe are set forth. The making of books touched on this vast range of activities because books were products of artisanal labor, objects of economic exchange, vehicles of ideas, and elements in political and religious conflict. The ways ideas traveled in early modern Europe, the level of penetration of Enlightenment ideas in the society of the Old Regime, and the connections between the Enlightenment and the French Revolution are brilliantly treated by Darnton. In doing so he unearths a double paradox. It was the upper orders in society rather than the industrial bourgeoisie or the lower classes that first shook off archaic beliefs and took up Enlightenment ideas. And the state, which initially had suppressed those ideas, ultimately came to favor them. Yet at this high point in the diffusion and legitimation of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution erupted, destroying the social and political order in which the Enlightenment had flourished. Never again will the contours of the Enlightenment be drawn without reference to this work. Darnton has written an indispensable book for historians of modern Europe.

The Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the Encyclopedie, 1775-1800, Used [Paperback]

3. Caught in the Web of Words: James A. H. Murray and the Oxford English Dictionary [Paperback - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. This biography of the first editor of the Oxford English Dictionary is based on original documents. It is an account of how the dictionary was compiled, the problems the editor had to solve and the endless difficulties which nearly led to the whole project being abandoned.

Caught in the Web of Words : James A. H. Murray and the Oxford English Dictionary, Used [Paperback]

4. The Story of Ain't: America, Its Language, and the Most Controversial Dictionary Ever Published, Used [Paperback]

"It takes true brilliance to lift the arid tellings of lexicographic fussing into the readable realm of the thriller and the bodice-ripper....David Skinner has done precisely this, taking a fine story and honing it to popular perfection." --Simon Winchester, New York Times bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman The Story of Ain't by David Skinner is the captivating true chronicle of the creation of Merriam Webster's Third New International Dictionary in 1961, the most controversial dictionary ever published. Skinner's surprising and engaging, erudite and witty account will enthrall fans of Winchester's The Professor and the Madman and The Meaning of Everything , and The Know-It-All by A.J. Jacobs, as it explores a culture in transition and the brilliant, colorful individuals behind it. The Story of Ain't is a smart, often outrageous, and altogether remarkable tale of how egos, infighting, and controversy shaped one of America's most authoritative language texts, sparking a furious language debate that the late, great author David Foster Wallace ( Infinite Jest ) once called "the Fort Sumter of the Usage Wars."

The Story of Ain't : America, Its Language, and the Most Controversial Dictionary Ever Published, Used [Paperback]

5. Horsefeathers: & Other Curious Words, (Paperback)

From \"mad as a wet hen\" to \"corn dodger\" and \"hobgoblin,\" Charles Funk's collections of curious words and expressions are a treasure trove of word origin. If you've ever wondered why the candy is called butterscotch; why a certain Southern food is called a hushpuppy; why log supports in a fireplace are known as andirons, or, sometimes, firedogs; you'll be fascinated by the origins of the over 600 words discussed in \"a book that gets curiouser and curiouser as it goes along\"(San Francisco Chronicle).

Horsefeathers, (Paperback) Author: Avon Books ISBN: 9780060513375 Format: Paperback Publication Date: 2016-08-18 Page Count: 256

6. Caught in the Web of Words: James A. H. Murray and the Oxford English Dictionary, Used [Hardcover]

This unique and celebrated biography describes how a largely self-educated boy from a small village in Scotland entered the world of scholarship and became the first editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, and a lexicographer greater by far than Dr. Johnson. It also provides an absorbing account of how the dictionary was written, the personalities of the people working on it, and the endless difficulties which nearly led to the whole enterprise being abandoned.

Caught in the Web of Words: James A. H. Murray and the Oxford English Dictionary, Used [Hardcover]

7. Founding Grammars: How Early America's War Over Words Shaped Today's Language [Hardcover - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. Who decided not to split infinitives? With whom should we take issue if in fact, we wish to boldly write what no grammarian hath writ before? In Founding Grammars, Rosemarie Ostler delves into the roots of our grammar obsession to answer these questions and many more. Standard grammar and accurate spelling are widely considered hallmarks of a good education, but their exact definitions are much more contentious - capable of inciting a full-blown grammar war at the splice of a comma, battles readily visible in the media and online in the comments of blogs and chat rooms. With an accessible and enthusiastic journalistic approach, Ostler considers these grammatical shibboleths, tracing current debates back to America's earliest days, an era when most families owned only two books - the Bible and a grammar primer. Along the way, she investigates colorful historical characters on both sides of the grammar debate in her efforts to unmask the origins of contemporary speech. Linguistic founding fathers like Noah Webster, Tory expatriate Lindley Murray, and post-Civil War literary critic Richard Grant White, all play a featured role in creating the rules we've come to use, and occasionally discard, throughout the years. Founding Grammars is for curious readers who want to know where grammar rules have come from, where they've been, and where they might go next.

Founding Grammars : How Early America's War over Words Shaped Today's Language, Used [Hardcover]

8. From Squaw Tit to Whorehouse Meadow: How Maps Name, Claim, and Inflame, Used [Hardcover]

Brassiere Hills, Alaska. Mollys Nipple, Utah. Outhouse Draw, Nevada. In the early twentieth century, it was common for towns and geographical features to have salacious, bawdy, and even derogatory names. In the age before political correctness, mapmakers readily accepted any local preference for place names, prizing accurate representation over standards of decorum. Thus, summits such as Squaw Tit--which towered above valleys in Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, and California--found their way into the cartographic annals. Later, when sanctions prohibited local use of racially, ethnically, and scatalogically offensive toponyms, town names like Jap Valley, California, were erased from the national and cultural map forever. From Squaw Tit to Whorehouse Meadow probes this little-known chapter in American cartographic history by considering the intersecting efforts to computerize mapmaking, standardize geographic names, and respond to public concern over ethnically offensive appellations. Interweaving cartographic history with tales of politics and power, celebrated geographer Mark Monmonier locates his story within the past and present struggles of mapmakers to create an orderly process for naming that avoids confusion, preserves history, and serves different political aims. Anchored by a diverse selection of naming controversies--in the United States, Canada, Cyprus, Israel, Palestine, and Antarctica; on the ocean floor and the surface of the moon; and in other parts of our solar system-- From Squaw Tit to Whorehouse Meadow richly reveals the map's role as a mediated portrait of the cultural landscape. And unlike other books that consider place names, this is the first to reflect on both the real cartographic and political imbroglios they engender. From Squaw Tit to Whorehouse Meadow is Mark Monmonier at his finest: a learned analysis of a timely and controversial subject rendered accessible--and even entertaining--to the general reader.

From Squaw Tit to Whorehouse Meadow : How Maps Name, Claim, and Inflame, Used [Hardcover]

9. The Lexicographer's Dilemma : The Evolution of 'Proper' English, from Shakespeare to South Park, Used [Paperback]

In its long history, the English language has had many lawmakers-those who have tried to regulate or otherwise organize the way we speak. The Lexicographer's Dilemma poses a pair of questions-what does proper English mean, and who gets to say what's right? Our ideas of correct or proper English have a history, and today's debates over the state of the language-whether about Ebonics in schools, the unique use of language in a South Park episode, or split infinitives in the Times -make sense only in historical context. As historian Jack Lynch has discovered, every rule has a human history, and the characters who populate his narrative are as interesting for their obsessions as for their erudition. Charting the evolution of English with wit and intelligence, he provides a rich historical perspective that makes us appreciate a new the hard-won standards we now enjoy.

The Lexicographer's Dilemma : The Evolution of 'Proper' English, from Shakespeare to South Park, Used [Paperback]

10. A Dictionary of Made-Up Languages : From Adunaic to Elvish, Zaum to Klingon - The Anwa (Real) Origins of Invented Lexicons, Used [Hardcover]

Can you converse in Klingon? Ask an Elf the time of day? Greet a speaker of Esperanto? These are among the more than 100 constructed languages you'll find in this book. For each one, author Stephen D. Rogers provides vocabulary, grammatical features, background information on the language and its inventor, and fascinating facts. What's more, easy-to-follow guidelines show you how to construct your own made-up language--everything from building vocabulary to making up a grammar. So pick up this dictionary In no time, you'll be telling your friends, "Tsun oe nga-hu ni-Na'vi pangkxo a f -'u oe-ru prrte' lu." ("It's a pleasure to be able to chat with you in Navi.")

A Dictionary of Made-Up Languages : From Adunaic to Elvish, Zaum to Klingon - The Anwa (Real) Origins of Invented Lexicons, Used [Hardcover]