This is a special edition of podictionary. This 33 minute podcast comes to you from the University of Chicago where this summer the Dictionary Society of North America held its 16th biennial meeting. Part of the program was a public “open microphone” session at which people were invited to make their case for a new word that they felt should be in the dictionary.

The session was hosted by Erin McKean and the new word judging panel was made up of

• David Jost – Director of Electronic Publishing for Houghton Mifflin;
• Wendalyn Nichols – former Editorial Director of Reference Works at Random House; and
• Grant Barrett – editor of the Double Tongued Dictionary and host of A Way With Words from KPBS radio

Podictionary recorded the session and KPBS was kind enough to edit the audio for co-podcast release. During the course of the episode you’ll hear references to the following websites:

• Dictionary Society of North America
• Erin McKean’s Dictionary Evangelist
• Cambridge University Press dictionaries
• Oxford English Corpus
• American Heritage Dictionary at Bartleby.com
• Copy Editor newsletter
• Carl Burnett’s Ski Dictionary
• Amy Reynaldo’s Diary of a Crossword Fiend
• Mark Peter’s Wordlustitude
  
• Charles Hodgson’s Carnal Knowledge book about the words for our bodies

Thanks to everyone who participated and particularly to those who helped organize the event and prepare this podcast.