lexicographer

• POS: Noun
• HYPHEN: lex=i=cog=ra=pher

CIDE DICTIONARY

lexicographer, 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."  [1913 Webster]

DEVIL DICTIONARY

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

THESAURUS

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

ROGET THESAURUS

lexicographer

Scholar

N scholar, connoisseur, savant, pundit, schoolman, professor, graduate, wrangler, academician, academist, master of arts, doctor, licentitate, gownsman, philosopher, master of math, scientist, clerk, sophist, sophister, linguist, glossolinguist, philologist, philologer, lexicographer, glossographer, grammarian, litterateur, literati, dilettanti, illuminati, cogniscenti, fellow, Hebraist, lexicologist, mullah, munshi, Sanskritish, sinologist, sinologue, Mezzofanti, admirable Crichton, Mecaenas, bookworm, helluo librorum, bibliophile, bibliomaniac, bluestocking, bas-bleu, bigwig, learned Theban, don, Artium Baccalaureus, Artium Magister, learned man, literary man, homo multarum literarum, man of learning, man of letters, man of education, man of genius, antiquarian, antiquary, archaeologist, sage, pedant, doctrinaire, pedagogue, Dr, Pangloss, pantologist, criminologist, schoolboy, learned, brought up at the feet of Gamaliel, he was a scholar and a ripe and good one, the manifold linguist.