Who?

harm·less drudg·ery is owned and operated by Kory Stamper, a lexicographer who has spent almost 25 years now slowly going blind while defining words like “take” and “blue plate special.” She travels around the country giving talks and presentations on things that only other word nerds would be interested in, and she sometimes goes on the tee-vee to swear in a professional capacity.

If you enjoy the sort of pabulum (sense 3) that appears here, you can read more of Kory’s blabbing in the Guardian, where British commentors endlessly complain on every column she has written there, as well as The New York Times and The Washington Post. She also occasionally contributes to Strong Language, a blog about foul language.

Her debut nonfiction book, Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries, is available at fine purveyors of books everywhere. Publishers Weekly called it “occasionally profane,” which is delightful. She’s working on more nonfiction books that are about words and secret histories, and which will, no doubt, also be occasionally profane.

When she is not doing the word-nerd thing, she does other nerdy things, including knitting, baking, and language revitalization work.  But she will probably not bore you to death with those things here.

Her opinions, typos, and blog are her own, so no sense complaining to anyone else about them.

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