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.
Never too early to start teaching the young about automatic memory management.
January 12, 2026 at 1:35 PM
Other perpetrations of the rude peasants of this household include the use of a perfectly good dictionary as a doorstop. I'm sure Katherine Barber would be happy to know that her life's work is a better choice for this task than, say, a brick.
January 2, 2026 at 5:26 PM
I'm out of town, staying at the House of Whorfianism.
January 2, 2026 at 4:12 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
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
I know this is meant to be a "cool" way of writing "land", but I can't help reading it as a lambda, and then wanting to pronounce it with a [ɬ], as if it were a "cool" way of writing Welsh "ll".
December 25, 2025 at 1:24 PM
My all-time personal favorite thesaurus cartoon, from John Jonik:
December 22, 2025 at 3:51 PM
This seems to be the 10-year anniversary of my nerdiest Twitter post (which has to be saying something), wherein I bitch-slapped @jonathanhoefler.bsky.social for confusing the heraldic terms "rampant" and "segreant".
December 18, 2025 at 2:16 PM
Text from a friend, that I have absolutely no idea how to interpret
December 5, 2025 at 3:59 PM
Some of us are the in crowd hee hee
November 18, 2025 at 3:14 PM
Yessssss
November 17, 2025 at 10:20 PM
On Facebook, @straczynski.bsky.social posted pictures of Harlan Ellison's house. Keen-eyed observers will note that among the reference books around his desk can be found the Historical #Dictionary of American Slang (including two copies of volume 2).

www.facebook.com/groups/45866...
November 12, 2025 at 3:07 AM
My sense of what words might count as "common" vocabulary is, I think, rather different from most people's. Still: is the word _rudder_ really something that anyone needs to have explained?

www.nytimes.com/athletic/677...
November 8, 2025 at 2:46 PM
This weekend's sourdough effort. Looked and tasted pretty great, but I probably overproofed it a bit.
November 3, 2025 at 1:58 PM
Got that taken care of. 5m.
November 1, 2025 at 3:39 PM
October 31, 2025 at 6:37 PM
The OED on _aunt_ n. sense 1.b.
October 28, 2025 at 8:25 PM
Me, remove a DJ? Are you mad?

There is a back band, though:
October 17, 2025 at 6:23 PM
Hey check it out I am as cool as the other cool people on Bluesky!

Seriously, this is really exciting to me.
October 17, 2025 at 5:43 PM
Email that I probably shouldn't open
October 17, 2025 at 2:19 PM
@lancerichardson.bsky.social being interviewed by @shamblanderson.bsky.social at the NYPL, for the publication of True Nature, his biography of Peter Matthiessen
October 14, 2025 at 10:39 PM
This anecdote is found in D.G. Wells's _Recreations in Logic_ (1979):
October 14, 2025 at 1:05 AM
Here's one additional example, albeit from a self-published novel (Ryan Rayston, The Quiet Sound of Disappearing, 2011):
October 13, 2025 at 7:24 PM
Do you have an allergy to LaTeX? Try groff instead!

(Shamelessly copied from @[email protected] on Mastodon.)
October 10, 2025 at 1:26 PM
By complete coincidence, I was at one of my favorite bars in Brooklyn, Tooker Alley, tonight, and they had the Diamondback on the menu! Of course it was great.
October 10, 2025 at 2:51 AM