Erin McKean Quotes & Sayings

Twitter has already birthed an entire ecosystem of other sites that extend its power or interact with it. But Twitter isn't just a platform for technological innovation: It's showing signs as an engine of creativity for the language, too. — Erin McKean

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. — Erin McKean

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

A love letter is to be savored; a love email ... is to be forwarded to all your friends, and probably laughed at. — Erin McKean

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

Almost any word can be drafted to serve as a verb, even words we think of as eternal and unchanging, stuck in their more traditional roles. — Erin McKean

All words have life cycles. — Erin McKean

Words are so lovable. How could you not love words? — Erin McKean

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

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'. — Erin McKean

Most consumers don't have a good metric for deciding on whether the dictionary they want to use is a good one ... so they flip the book over, then go to the back, and it says, 'Over 250,000 entries.' And they go, 'Great, this dictionary must be awesome!' — Erin McKean

Writers who hedge their use of unfamiliar, infrequent, or informal words with 'I know that's not a real word,' hoping to distance themselves from criticism, run the risk of creating doubt where perhaps none would have naturally arisen. — Erin McKean

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. — Erin McKean

What I'm interested in is how people are reading and writing English. — Erin McKean

All language is a popularity contest. — Erin McKean

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.' — Erin McKean

I like someone who laughs, but not all the time, and not too loud. I like it when someone laughs at the world, and not at someone in particular - when some particularly absurd thing happens, not just someone falling down. — Erin McKean

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

Experiences is just paying attention as time passes. — Erin McKean

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

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

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

If you're talking about how you promoted synergy in an organization, that could mean you just got everybody together for donuts twice a week. — Erin McKean

Language is a nice way to remember things. — Erin McKean

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

Uniforms are intended to make the wearer look as strong as possible. Soldiers could fight in leotards, but that's never going to happen because leotards aren't intimidating. — Erin McKean

We think people go to a dictionary to find out what a word means. Most people go to the dictionary because they don't want to look stupid. — Erin McKean

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

For me, conferences are like little mental vacations: a chance to go visit an interesting place for a couple of days, and come back rested and refreshed with new ideas and perspectives. — Erin McKean

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. — Erin McKean

And I don't like people who eat powdered doughnuts. I don't car how careful you are, they're just plain messy. I can't believe they taste good enough to justify getting that sugar all over everything, especially me. — Erin McKean

You can weaponize nice ... Being nice can make you be a little underestimated. — Erin McKean

Words take on many different meanings. — Erin McKean

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. — Erin McKean

We've been using 'rejuvenate,' meaning to restore youth, to make young again, as a verb for at least 200 years. — Erin McKean

If anything is guaranteed to annoy a lexicographer, it is the journalistic habit of starting a story with a dictionary definition. — Erin McKean

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. — Erin McKean

It's difficult to choose a Word of the Year in the year that you're in. It's one of those things that hindsight makes more apparent. It's like looking at pictures from 10 years ago, and you notice the flannel and the ripped jeans. At the time, it didn't look to you like a real fashion trend. — Erin McKean

Sometimes, it seems to me that, the smaller the things is that people want, the bigger the disappointment when they don't get it, or it's not exactly right -dora — Erin McKean

Objections to verbification in English tend to be motivated by personal taste, not clarity. Verbed words are usually easily understood. When a word like 'friend' is declared not a verb, the problem isn't that it's confusing; it's that the protester finds it deeply annoying. — Erin McKean

It doesn't really matter [if she ever wears the dress], as long as she loves it. She'll wear it a hundred times in her imagination before she even tries it on again. As long as she has the option of wearing it, she'll be happy. — Erin McKean

This isn't a thrift store ... We're not selling them something less expensive, we're selling them something more special. We have to tell them the story of what we're showing them. And then we have to show them how they can be the new heroine in the story. — Erin McKean

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

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

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

Serendipity is when you find things you weren't looking for because finding what you are looking for is so damned difficult. — Erin McKean

If words are doing their job, then their novelty will not be the most noticeable thing about them. — Erin McKean

Lexicographers are language reporters. — Erin McKean