I am not a professional lexicographer, merely an amateur linguist. … The word quacks would have you believe that lexicographers invent or canonize new words. Besides the impromptu rounds of Stump the Chump, in which the general public expects lexicographers to be able to define and explain the etymology of every word in the dictionary, probably the next biggest irritant are the earnest attempts to force a new word into “The Dictionary,” as the quacks put it, as if there was just one dictionary. We anglophones don’t have anything like the Académie Fran
