Get your wordrobe on

The NYT had a nice article today about George A. Thompson, a word sleuth who spends his days combing 19th century New York newspapers. This sounds like an awfully interesting and fascinating job. John McWhorter has a new title The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language that explores the history of language in an enjoyable and accessible manner, controversial or not.

The Word Spy has already started collecting newly minted words for the Enronigate debacle that is sure to grow only to be forgotten with occasional historical references in short order. OUP has recently released Dictionary of the Internet which is full of words that you wouldn't find in a mainstream dictionary and may not be in common use in 10 years.

It would be nearly impossible to do but it would be interesting to make a gantt chart of 'words of the times' along with the events and plot the average amount of time the words they gave life to die out from popular usage. So many words, so little time.