May 2003

Jesse Sheidlower Gets the Last Word: Big, Small, and Four-Lettered

By Paula Bernstein

Sure, Jesse Sheidlower's a walking dictionary. But that doesn't really do the young lexicographer justice. With his slicked back black hair, London-tailored suits and passion for vocabulary, he's got a lot more personality than your average Webster's.

As the Principal North American Editor of The Oxford English Dictionary (O.E.D.)—the authority on the English language since the first 10-volume edition was published in 1929—Sheidlower, 34, is one of the country's foremost lexicographers. In addition to being an expert on American slang, Sheidlower is among a handful of people in the world who get to decide whether "line dancing" and "Kwanzaa" make it into the dictionary.

When the O.E.D. opened its first U.S. office in 2000, Sheidlower, who had already established himself as a wunderkind in the linguistic field, was the obvious choice to head it up. On top of his eight years experience as the project editor of the Historical Dictionary of American Slang, he had also earned extra credibility—and a few points for boldness—as the editor of The F-Word, a 272-page book devoted to a certain unmentionable four-letter word.

Sheidlower didn't always dream of definitions. The third child of Stanley and Edith Sheidlower, who ran a small science and nature toy company, he insists he wasn't particularly stellar in school. "My grades could have been better," he says. "I was a typical underachiever." Still, he managed to graduate high school at age 16, and admits to having done "reasonably well" on his SATs.

The Long Island, New York native intended to go into astrophysics but became enamored of historical linguistics while attending the University of Chicago. After graduating as an English major with special honors in 1989, he spent one year studying early English in the department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic languages at Trinity College in Cambridge, England.

He landed a job in the reference department at Random House in 1991, where his career in lexicography got a kick-start. Working on Random House's Historical Dictionary of American Slang made him an bona fide authority on the subject, which he has written about for various publications, including The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire and Harper's, as well as scholarly journals. While at Random House, Sheidlower developed the web site www.jessesword.com , where he answered people's linguistic questions. Some of the sites' wittiest entries were compiled for Jesse's Word of the Day: From Abacinate to Yonic, which was published in 1998.

Sheidlower's 1999 book traces the roots and endless uses of... well, you know

Sheidlower is in the enviable position of loving what he does for a living. "I learn something new every day," he says, noting the first-edition vintage novels which line his midtown Manhattan office. "I like learning about the language."

It's a good thing. After all, his job should keep him busy for the foreseeable future. Sheidlower has been charged with updating the O.E.D., which in its last unabridged version in 1989 filled 20 volumes and weighed in at a whopping 137 pounds. He estimates that a full revised edition would run 40 volumes. "The language is a big thing," he says with a mischievous gleam in his eye.

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Biography: What got you interested in words in the first place?
Sheidlower: I was always interested in words, but I never thought there would be any real chance of doing what I'm doing. It's a very small field and there's no clear way to prepare for it. I was lucky that I was working briefly at Knopf [book publishers] in the marketing department and a friend of mine in the reference department at Random House left his job and I got it. It was pure luck.

Biography: What's the biggest misconception that people have about your job?
Sheidlower: That I have some kind of authority over how they can and can't speak. I don't give tickets for bad usage, which is another misconception.

Biography: How carefully do you choose your words?
Sheidlower: Carefully, but I don't hesitate to use an expression that I need to just because I'm worried about what other people say.

Biography: What qualifies a word for entry into the Oxford English Dictionary?
Sheidlower: It's somewhat subjective. The main thing is that the word has to have general currency. We have a rule of thumb, which is that we want to have five examples of a word from five different sources over a span of five years. Although it's hard to state the criteria exactly, we are in general agreement about these things. We don't have editorial meetings where we argue about what should go in and what shouldn't go in.

Biography: What words are you most proud of getting into the O.E.D.?
Sheidlower: Very soon after I started here, I noticed that we didn't have "master of the universe" in the O.E.D. It was clear to me that it deserved to go in, but that in England perhaps people didn't realize how common it was. When I worked on it, it ended up having four different senses. There's Tom Wolfe's sense, which he coined in his book Bonfire of the Vanities, but there were earlier senses of the word going back to the 17th century. Stuff like that happens all the time.

Biography: Some of the latest additions to the O.E.D. include "McMansion," "gangsta," "tough love," "big hair" and "whack"—as in to kill someone. Which words are you working on adding at the moment?
Sheidlower: "Joe Six Pack," "Kwanzaa," "line dancing," "down and dirty," "ground" — as in to prevent a child from going out and "industrial," as in the type of music.

Biography: The O.E.D. has been called the Bible of dictionaries. Do you think that's an accurate description?
Sheidlower: There's no question we are the most comprehensive dictionary of English. Period. But we are not handing down the law for people to follow. We are showing people what the reality is and letting them make the decisions for themselves.

Biography: Your specialty is slang. Which do you think is more colorful, American or British slang?
Sheidlower: In general, American slang is much better than English slang. The entire world picks up American slang. American English is a big cultural export at this point. In the past, everyone wanted to learn British English. For cultural and economic reasons, people now want to learn American English.

Biography: The Historical Dictionary of American Slang, which you edited, defines slang as "an informal, nonstandard, nontechnical vocabulary composed chiefly of novel-sounding synonyms for standard words and phrases." Who do you define it?
Sheidlower: Slang is difficult to define, but it's a highly informal style of vocabulary. It is not a code. Slang isn't used by kids so that their parents don't understand what they're saying or by criminals so that non-criminals don't understand although some words from either of those two groups could qualify as slang. Some new words are slang, but by no means is slang just a new word.

Biography: Speaking of slang, you edited a book about the many uses for "the F-Word." Why did you choose to work on a book about this particular slang word?
Sheidlower: Because there's a lot to say about it. Because there's enough to fill a 250-page book about it without making any jokes. And because I could. It's a word that's been part of our language for over 500 years. It's unbelievably common and it's used in a huge variety of ways and it's something that people are interested in.

Biography: You mentioned American English as a cultural export. Which American movies and TV shows have had the biggest impact on language?
Sheidlower: Clueless ["Whatever!" "As if!"] and Wayne's World ["...not!" "babelicious"] are movies that have had a real effect. Usually a TV show or movie might popularize or even coin one or two particular words, which often become catchphrases, which are instantly recognizable as being associated with the particular show—not a general new word.

Biography: Can you think of any examples of words that are associated with certain TV shows, but actually were in use for many years beforehand?
Sheidlower:"Yadda, yadda, yadda" was around at least since the 1940s and was in quite common use for quite some time. We were paying attention to it before the Seinfeld episode. Did Seinfeld popularize it? Yes, definitely. Did it coin it? Absolutely not.

Biography: The same is true for "D'oh!" on The Simpsons, right?
Sheidlower: There's no question that all modern use of "D'oh!" stems from the use of it on The Simpsons, but we have examples of that going back to the 1940s as well. The original script simply specified an "annoyed grunt" and Dan Castellaneta, who is the voice of Homer Simpson, came up with it himself after a character in the Laurel and Hardy series who did the same thing.

Biography: Do you think language be taught differently in schools?
Sheidlower:I am not opposed to teaching standard English in schools by any stretch, but I am opposed to the way standard English is usually taught, which is usually with explicit mention that any other kind of language is wrong and bad and you're stupid if you speak this way. It's simply not true and divisive and hostile.

Biography: How do you respond to critics who say that slang has no place in a proper dictionary?
Sheidlower: It absolutely does. I don't see how anyone benefits from not knowing what something means or how old it is or where it comes from.
Biography: How often do you encounter words that you don't know?
Sheidlower: All the time. There are a lot of words out there.

PAULA BERNSTEIN IS A FREELANCE WRITER BASED IN NEW YORK CITY.

Copyright © 2003 Biography Magazine.