Lexicographer

4 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Lexicographer \Lex`i*cog"ra*pher\
     (l[e^]ks`[i^]*k[o^]g"r[.a]*f[~e]r), n. [Gr. lexikogra`fos;
     lexiko`n dictionary + gra`fein to write: cf. F. lexicographe.
     See {Lexicon}.]
     The author or compiler of a lexicon or dictionary.
     [1913 Webster]


  
           Every other author may aspire to praise; the
           lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach; and
           even this negative recompense has been yet granted to
           very few.                                --Johnson.
     [1913 Webster] Lexicographic

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  lexicographer
       n : a compiler or writer of a dictionary; a student of the
           lexical component of language [syn: {lexicologist}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  62 Moby Thesaurus words for "lexicographer":
     allegorist, annotator, cicerone, clarifier, commentator, critic,
     cryptanalyst, cryptographer, cryptologist, decoder, definer,
     demonstrator, demythologizer, dialectician, diaskeuast, dragoman,
     editor, emendator, emender, etymologer, etymologist, euhemerist,
     exegesist, exegete, exegetist, explainer, explicator, exponent,
     expositor, expounder, glossarist, glossographer, go-between,
     grammarian, grammaticaster, grammatist, guide, hermeneut,
     interpreter, lexicologist, linguist, linguistic scholar,
     linguistic scientist, linguistician, metaphrast, oneirocritic,
     orthoepist, paleographer, paraphrast, philologaster, philologer,
     philologian, philologist, phonemicist, phonetician, phoneticist,
     phonologist, scholiast, semanticist, semasiologist, textual critic,
     translator
  
  

From THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY ((C)1911 Released April 15 1993) [devils]:

  LEXICOGRAPHER, n.  A pestilent fellow who, under the pretense of
  recording some particular stage in the development of a language, does
  what he can to arrest its growth, stiffen its flexibility and
  mechanize its methods.  For your lexicographer, having written his
  dictionary, comes to be considered "as one having authority," whereas
  his function is only to make a record, not to give a law.  The natural
  servility of the human understanding having invested him with judicial
  power, surrenders its right of reason and submits itself to a
  chronicle as if it were a statue.  Let the dictionary (for example)
  mark a good word as "obsolete" or "obsolescent" and few men
  thereafter venture to use it, whatever their need of it and however
  desirable its restoration to favor -- whereby the process of
  improverishment is accelerated and speech decays.  On the contrary,
  recognizing the truth that language must grow by innovation if it grow
  at all, makes new words and uses the old in an unfamiliar sense, has
  no following and is tartly reminded that "it isn't in the dictionary"
  -- although down to the time of the first lexicographer (Heaven
  forgive him!) no author ever had used a word that _was_ in the
  dictionary.  In the golden prime and high noon of English speech; when
  from the lips of the great Elizabethans fell words that made their own
  meaning and carried it in their very sound; when a Shakespeare and a
  Bacon were possible, and the language now rapidly perishing at one end
  and slowly renewed at the other was in vigorous growth and hardy
  preservation -- sweeter than honey and stronger than a lion -- the
  lexicographer was a person unknown, the dictionary a creation which
  his Creator had not created him to create.
  
      God said:  "Let Spirit perish into Form,"
      And lexicographers arose, a swarm!
      Thought fled and left her clothing, which they took,
      And catalogued each garment in a book.
      Now, from her leafy covert when she cries:
      "Give me my clothes and I'll return," they rise
      And scan the list, and say without compassion:
      "Excuse us -- they are mostly out of fashion."
                                                         Sigismund Smith