The Man Who Defined "Sheeple," With Stefan Fatsis | Defector

"Unabridged is meticulous in illuminating the actual work of lexicography, the language obsessives who do that work and have done it in the past, and the strangely vibrant business of words. It's great fun to read, too, with lavish descriptions of filing cabinets, weird cluttered spaces, and the various true-blue American Freaks who have shared this particular fixation. I had never really thought about the dictionary in this way until I read it for the reading series I do in Brooklyn,"

"Stefan Fatsis went 17 years between books, but you wouldn't say that he was taking it easy. He was on NPR and co-hosted Slate's Hang Up and Listen podcast for many years, and was writing big feature stories on a fairly regular cadence, but there was no new book until Unabridged, his excellent new history of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, American lexicography, and his experience while embedded with the dictionary's staff of lexicographers, came out last month."

"There's a lot there to talk about: the longstanding human urge to put a bunch of words together in alphabetical order, how long it took for that to turn into the comprehensive dictionary we know today, and the grandiosity and genius of the early American weirdos who were obsessed with this work,"

Merriam-Webster's development and operation are portrayed through detailed accounts of lexicographic practice and the daily work of dictionary staff. Lexicographers maintain exhaustive filing systems, track language shifts, and debate word inclusion with methodological rigor. The narrative highlights eccentric, obsessive personalities who shaped American lexicography, vivid descriptions of cluttered offices and filing cabinets, and the business realities of dictionary production. The process of turning alphabetical lists into a comprehensive dictionary required institutional ambition and perseverance. Examples such as the journalistic effort to get 'sheeple' included illustrate how usage, evidence, and editorial judgment determine which words enter the dictionary and how American English evolves.

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