Jesse Sheidlower
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jessesword.com
Jesse Sheidlower
@jessesword.com
5.1K followers 490 following 2.4K posts
Lexicographer. The F-Word (new edition Nov. ’24!), sfdictionary.com, ex-OED, coder (mainly Perl and Python), Threesome Tollbooth #cocktail bar manager, adjunct @ Columbia. "Appealingly obsessive" — NYT
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jessesword.com
Jesse Sheidlower @jessesword.com · Oct 22
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
Cover picture: The F-Word edited by Jesse Sheidlower IV Edition
jessesword.com
I used to fuck like that.
Photograph of the 1946 sculpture "The Impossible, III", by Maria Martins, from MoMA. The sculpture depicts an abstract nude couple moving towards an embrace, but their heads consist largely of spiky tentacles that aggressively reach out to the other, and are partly connected, and it's kind of disturbing.
January 18, 2026 at 10:38 PM
Reposted by Jesse Sheidlower
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
Had an intriguing editorial discussion recently: how did people in the past talk about 'minutes' when they didn't have watches or standardised times? How does that affect your thinking?

Come down an Elizabethan/Jacobean rabbit hole with me.

1/
January 17, 2026 at 10:34 AM
jessesword.com
Please read this beautiful essay by Ruth Franklin on America: both the country, and the Simon & Garfunkel song.

ruthfranklin.substack.com/p/empty-and-...
Empty and aching
Looking for America.
ruthfranklin.substack.com
January 16, 2026 at 8:09 PM
jessesword.com
In another place, people were suggesting songs that reliably cheer you up, and in case anyone needs the perfect one, may I present Gil Scott-Heron's "Lady Day and John Coltrane":

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aRN...
Ever feel kind of down and out You don't know just what to do? Livin' all of your days in darkness Let the sun shine through Ever feel that somehow, somewhere You lost your way? And if you don't get-a help quick You won't make it through the day? Could you call on Lady Day? Could you call on John Coltrane? Now, ‘cause they'll, they'll wash your troubles Your troubles, your troubles, your troubles away!
January 16, 2026 at 6:02 PM
jessesword.com
Hello! We have a whopping _three_ new entries for the Historical #Dictionary of #ScienceFiction, all pertaining to critters from Deneb. 1940s onwards, common '50s, now rarer, like many such terms.

sfdictionary.com/view/2759/de...
sfdictionary.com/view/2760/de...
sfdictionary.com/view/3056/de...
Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction: Denebian
Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction
sfdictionary.com
January 15, 2026 at 4:24 PM
jessesword.com
Lovely article about an oddball who bought a failing high-end oboe company and is trying to make it work, with a staff of oddballs. This is what I want to read.

www.nytimes.com/2026/01/14/a...
If You Think This Instrument Is Hard to Play, Try Building One
www.nytimes.com
January 15, 2026 at 2:09 AM
Reposted by Jesse Sheidlower
simonkoppel.bsky.social
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
jessesword.com
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
jessesword.com
Never too early to start teaching the young about automatic memory management.
Photo of a toy truck in a playground. The truck has "garbage collection" printed on its side.
January 12, 2026 at 1:35 PM
Reposted by Jesse Sheidlower
americandialect.org
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
mixedlinguist.bsky.social
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
jessesword.com
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
petersokolowski.bsky.social
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
jessesword.com
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
jessesword.com
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
jessesword.com
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
chelseagsummers.bsky.social
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
jessesword.com
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
jessesword.com
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
mydadisdracula.bsky.social
My Dad is Dracula (and a Medieval Scholar) 🏰
January 5, 2026 at 5:55 PM
jessesword.com
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
jessesword.com
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
jessesword.com
I'm out of town, staying at the House of Whorfianism.
My hand, holding a book by a window with snow outside. The book is titled _Grammar for a Full Life: How the Ways We Shape a Sentence Can Limit or Enlarge Us_.
January 2, 2026 at 4:12 PM
jessesword.com
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
jessesword.com
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