Show notes
How do you define what blue is? What even IS colour? Turns out, the quest to define colours was happening along with a standardisation crisis and a dictionary crisis at the venerable Merriam-Webster. Lexicographer and author Kory Stamper tells us all about it, and about her new book True Color. Timestamps Start: 0:00 Intros: 1:17 News: 12:40 Related or Not: 33:34 Chat with Kory Stamper, author of True Color: 50:43 Words of the Week: 1:41:58 Comment from Lauretta: 2:04:57 The Reads: 2:08:14 Outtakes: 2:16:48
Highlighted moments
why would you need to enshrine English as an official language when it's the de facto official language? Well, this reveals a belief that whatever the current status of English is in New Zealand, it's not enough. And that's why it needs this kind of protective status.
“the loss of commercial lexicography, particularly in our current moment, with a lot of misinformation and disinformation really feels hard to me.”
“I could tell this is AI and I didn't read it because if you can't be bothered to write it, I can't be bothered to read it.”
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