Jesse Sheidlower
Author of The F-Word
About the Author
Works by Jesse Sheidlower
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1968-08-05
- Gender
- male
- Education
- University of Chicago
University of Cambridge - Occupations
- linguist
lexicographer
editor - Organizations
- Oxford University Press
American Dialect Society
Columbia University
Linguistic Atlas of America - Short biography
- [from author's website]
I am currently an adjunct assistant professor in the Writing program at Columbia University. I am the author of The F-Word, a detailed history of the word "fuck", and the Past President of the American Dialect Society. I am also the editor of the Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction. I have been an editor for Random House Dictionaries and the Oxford English Dictionary; I have been profiled on the front page of the New York Times and on 60 Minutes, and New York Magazine has named me one of the 100 smartest people in New York. I have written about language for a variety of publications, and given talks about language in many places.
When not doing language-y stuff, I moonlight as a software developer, mainly in Perl and Python, on *nix-based systems. I currently work for an academic publisher for my day job, and I have developed a number of non-public applications and a variety of public ones, including the Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction and the PangramTweets bot.
I am also keenly interested in food and wine, and have written about food for Gourmet, reviewed bars for Time Out New York, and work as a bartender at a number of (usually) underground parties. I am currently the bar manager of the Threesome Tollbooth, a very small high-end cocktail bar in Brooklyn. - Nationality
- USA
- Associated Place (for map)
- USA
Members
Reviews
Got this one under the mistaken impression that it would be more a cultural history than a dictionary; while Sheidlower's introduction is excellent, the bulk of the book is basically dictionary entries for various forms and derivations with OED-style citations. The front matter is very much worth a read, though.
I love words: their history, their changing use, the power they have. And if we want to talk about words of power, the infamous F-word certainly has it. From chasing down the assorted stories of its origins to detailing its flexibility and application, I don't think the author missed a turn (at least up to the time of the book's original publication). One of the appendixes in the original edition (I believe it was removed in later editions) was a listing of how the F-word had wandered and show more taken up a place in other languages.
Talk about word power! show less
Talk about word power! show less
This rather serious study of THE four-letter word is in two parts: an overview of the word's history and acceptance in dictionaries and print and then a dictionary of the word, including variants and phrases. There are many, many sources for the entries and I applaud the author for bringing this level of scholarship and research to such a singular word.
Not the book I expected. I thought it was going to be a cultural history of the word "fuck" through history and various usages. That was just the introduction which was pretty good. The main body of this work is 269 page lexicon of different usages and phrases of the f-word. It perhaps make an useful reference book, but definitely not something I'm going to read end to end.
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Statistics
- Works
- 4
- Members
- 481
- Popularity
- #51,316
- Rating
- 3.8
- Reviews
- 5
- ISBNs
- 11