Jesse Sheidlower
jessesword.com
Jesse Sheidlower
@jessesword.com
Lexicographer. The F-Word (new edition Nov. ’24!), sfdictionary.com, ex-OED, coder (mainly Perl and Python), Threesome Tollbooth #cocktail bar manager, adjunct @ Columbia.
Pinned
News: the 4th edition of The F-Word is coming out in two weeks from Oxford UP! Everything you could want to know about the word _fuck_.

This is a major revision: 500 pages with 150 new entries, 150 antedatings, & 2,500 new quotations. See link below for more info!

jessesword.com/fword.html
Reposted by Jesse Sheidlower
Flagging for my language-related followers, in case you haven't noticed, the welcome re-emergence of elephind.com, a single search engine for a huge range of (free) newspaper archives including some unusual ones like US college newspapers. #lexicography #OEDantedating #linguistics 1/2
elephind.com
January 12, 2026 at 4:39 PM
Big antedating for the Historical #Dictionary of #ScienceFiction: "Venerian", the language of Venerians (i.e. those from Venus), from 1948 to 1930. This is pretty much dead after the 1950s, so we'd be grateful for any postdatings too.

sfdictionary.com/view/397/ven...
Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction: Venerian
Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction
sfdictionary.com
January 12, 2026 at 3:21 PM
Never too early to start teaching the young about automatic memory management.
January 12, 2026 at 1:35 PM
Reposted by Jesse Sheidlower
The 2025 Word of the Year is "slop," both as a noun for low-quality AI-generated content and as a combining form for anything of little value. Read the full press release. #WOTY2025 #ADS2026 #LSA2026
americandialect.org/2025-word-of...
2025 Word of the Year Is “Slop”
New Orleans Marriott–Jan. 9—The American Dialect Society, in its 36th annual words-of-the-year vote, selected slop as the Word of the Year for 2025. More than three hundred attendees took part in the…
americandialect.org
January 10, 2026 at 8:18 AM
Reposted by Jesse Sheidlower
The American Dialect Society has chosen its word of the year: slop…used as both a freestanding noun, and a productive suffix! Check out all the words we nominated at the link! And while I nominated “that’s AI” (and it won for most useful), there’s no fake news here!
January 10, 2026 at 3:18 AM
I got an email fr a 140-year-old company I sometimes shop from, offering me "Archive Treasures". It goes on to mention "treasures from our past" which I am "invited to explore" &c.

AFAICT this really is just a postseason sale. What angers me is that the co. truly has an archive. But this is not it.
January 9, 2026 at 5:47 PM
Reposted by Jesse Sheidlower
NYC folks! I'll be in NYC on Thursday, January 29 to talk about creating the new edition of the @merriam-webster.com Collegiate Dictionary at the Barnes & Noble in the Upper West Side.

stores.barnesandnoble.com/event/978006...
Editor at Large Peter Sokolowski discusses MERRIAM-WEBSTER'S COLLEGIATE DICTIONARY, 12TH EDITION
Join us for an in-store event, Editor at Large Peter Sokolowski discusses MERRIAM-WEBSTER'S COLLEGIATE DICTIONARY, 12TH EDITION, on Thursday, January 29, 2026.
stores.barnesandnoble.com
January 9, 2026 at 3:21 PM
Fascinating antedating for the Historical #Dictionary of #ScienceFiction: "edisonade", John Clute's term for a proto-SF story abt a young inventor. Clute had previously told us that he coined this for the Encyclopedia of SF, but he actually used it 3 years earlier!

sfdictionary.com/view/2011/ed...
Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction: edisonade
Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction
sfdictionary.com
January 9, 2026 at 3:09 PM
The American Dialect Society (@americandialect.org) has announced the nominations for its Word of the Year—this is the one that matters, people! Vote will be tonight.

americandialect.org/nominations-...
Nominations for Words of the Year 2025
Nominations for Words of the Year 2025 follow below. The final selection will be held at 6:45 pm CST on Friday, Jan. 9 (Carondelet, 3rd floor, New Orleans Marriott). American Dialect Society 2025…
americandialect.org
January 9, 2026 at 2:20 PM
New entry for the Historical #Dictionary of #ScienceFiction: "space legs", bodily comfort in space, after "sea legs". From 1936, including a 1964 example from Anaïs Nin describing an LSD trip! Been meaning to publish this one for a while.

sfdictionary.com/view/1293/sp...
Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction: space legs
Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction
sfdictionary.com
January 8, 2026 at 3:26 PM
Reposted by Jesse Sheidlower
The new Smith & Taylor Classics edition of old fave Fanny Hill, with an intro by me and an afterward with @stoya.bsky.social and me, is now out. Come for the discomfiting porn, stay for my sarcastic footnotes. It's a whole big thing. www.unnamedpress.com/all-books/p/...
Fanny Hill: Or, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure — Unnamed Press
by John Cleland Published: January 06, 2026 ISBN: 9781961884731 Paperback $18.95
www.unnamedpress.com
January 6, 2026 at 3:53 PM
Historical #Dictionary of #ScienceFiction update: lots of holiday coding for a small benefit, but pseudonyms are now handled better. You can look up e.g. Andrew North or Will Atheling, and get those as well as x-r's to Andrew Norton and James Blish. Still adding more; feedback welcome!
January 6, 2026 at 2:57 PM
I've lately seen a number of previously unwatched "classic" or "important" movies that have disappointed me.

I was therefore nervous about yesterday's The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, but OMG what an absolutely incredible film. I can't say enough about how much I loved it.
January 6, 2026 at 1:50 PM
Reposted by Jesse Sheidlower
My Dad is Dracula (and a Medieval Scholar) 🏰
January 5, 2026 at 5:55 PM
If you need a timeline cleanse (& yes, of course you do), there's always John Bonham's miraculously great Moby Dick fr the 1970 Royal Albert Hall show.

(I'd seen it before, but reminded by last week's @flaminghydra.com piece about it flaminghydra.com/cetacean-solo/)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOb8...
Led Zeppelin - Moby Dick (Live at The Royal Albert Hall 1970) [Official Video]
YouTube video by Led Zeppelin
www.youtube.com
January 4, 2026 at 3:19 PM
Got a poetry book delivered that has about the worst production quality I've ever seen from a commercial press (albeit a small one); it's just astounding. Wasn't cheap either.

Very frustrating.
January 4, 2026 at 3:21 AM
I'm out of town, staying at the House of Whorfianism.
January 2, 2026 at 4:12 PM
Well, this is particularly disgusting.

www.nytimes.com/2025/12/31/c...
NASA’s Largest Library Is Closing Amid Staff and Lab Cuts
www.nytimes.com
January 1, 2026 at 8:10 PM
I don't know precisely what ASMR is, but I'm in the woods of far western NY, and it's snowing and it's 5 degrees out, and the sound of the crunching snow is nothing like you get in NYC, and it's extremely pleasant.

(sound on)
January 1, 2026 at 2:43 PM
Reposted by Jesse Sheidlower
Fresco of January at Castello Buonconsiglio, Trento, Italy, (detail), c. 1405-1410.
January 1, 2026 at 10:13 AM
With a few hours to go in the tax year, I wanted to make sure I got an extra donation in to @wikimediafoundation.org and to @archive.org, among a range of other causes. Wish I could manage more, but this is at least something I know I can do.
January 1, 2026 at 1:13 AM
In a Historical #Dictionary of #ScienceFiction discovery so dull that I'm burying it in the holiday news cycle, we have a four-year antedating of the rare _Callistan_ (the language of Callisto), from John W. Campbell:

sfdictionary.com/view/2606/ca...
Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction: Callistan
Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction
sfdictionary.com
December 30, 2025 at 2:05 PM
Reposted by Jesse Sheidlower
I can't hope for, ask for, or expect much, but a treat for the new year would be to get to 5000 followers, something I was very close to on Twitter before I walked away from it.

Not that it will make a real difference. But so many things don't. Might as well enjoy them anyway if one can.
December 28, 2025 at 3:29 AM
Post a perfect album from the 90s that isn't nirvana, soundgarden, pearl jam, or alice in chains
December 28, 2025 at 3:06 AM
Reposted by Jesse Sheidlower
DEVIL: You shall stay forever young, but this picture of you will bear the marks of your sin!
DORIAN: Can I hide it?
DEVIL: Well, yes, but—
DORIAN: And there are no other consequences?
DEVIL: This… This picture will become so foul!
DORIAN: Again, probably I’ll hide the picture.
July 2, 2023 at 3:01 PM