Erin McKean

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

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.

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

All true language is incomprehensible, like the chatter of a beggar's teeth.

Most reporters who come to me get their stories directly from press releases. Very few do what one would consider to be their professional duty.

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