Quotes from Erin McKean

Words take on many different meanings.

People say jargon is a bad thing, but it's really a shortcut vocabulary professionals use to understand one another.

The use of food metaphors is really well established English... Somebody is a peach, a hot tamale.

If you say 'anti-aging,' how anti would it have to be, really? My guess is not much. Any amount of sunscreen could be considered anti-aging.

Part of the joy and pleasure of English is its boundless creativity: I can describe a new machine as bicyclish, I can say that I'm vitamining myself to stave off a cold, I can complain that someone is the smilingest person I've ever seen, and I can decide, out of the blue, that 'fetch' is now the word I want to use to mean 'cool.'

You can limit the number of invitations to an in-person fashion show, but you can't police the Internet.

All language is a popularity contest.

All words have life cycles.

Most of the words you know and love and use every day are not words you learned by looking them up in a dictionary and reading a definition.

Ideally my goal is, before I die, to have some information about every word that's ever been used in print.

'Aging' has been bad ever since we figured out it led to dying.

There are very few good ways to get publicity for a dictionary.

Twitter is like overhearing people's conversations, which is exactly what dictionary editors have been wishing we could do for years.

By the time the traditionally male lexicographers become interested in looking at fashion words, their origins are lost in the mists of time.

There are hundreds of thousands of words that aren't in any print dictionary today... because there's no space for all of them.

I think we would all like to believe that every new event demands a new word. But we're environmentally conscious with our words. We recycle words we've got.

People say to me, 'How do I know if a word is real?' You know, anybody who's read a children's book knows that love makes things real. If you love a word, use it. That makes it real.

You don't have to be pretty. You don't owe prettiness to anyone.

You don't owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don't owe it to your mother, you don't owe it to your children, you don't owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked 'female'.

if you want someone to stop listening to you go ahead and yell. If you want them to listen to every word, whisper. -Mimi

Singing is probably the better medicine than half the stuff they sell in pill bottles, and it's cheaper, too.

Experiences is just paying attention as time passes.

The rule is, don't speak of the dead, not don't speak ill of the dead's terrible relatives.

Singing when no one else is around is always good. I especially like belters. Good, loud singing is probably better medicine than half the stuff they sell in pill bottles, and it's cheaper, too. I also think people should never turn down an opportunity to hold a baby. There's something about the feel of a new baby in your arms that just fixes you.