William Safire's charge to lexicographers

In today's "On Language" column, William Safire spurred lexicographers to get with the program, produce entries describing "inartful," and pay homage to him for recognizing and critiquing the term when Mario Cuomo used it as a political dodge years ago.

Safire's article, full to the brim with his usual language-maven bravado, reflects two fascinating things (at least to me) about our lexicographical culture.

1) Immediately after reminding us of his political affiliations (his words once issued forth from Richard Nixon's vocal tract), Safire declares his lexicographical affinities: no liberal Webster's Third or Anglophile OED for him, no sir. Safire's strictly a Funk and Wagnall's man. While a lovely dictionary, no title connotes conservatism quite so well, from its infelicitous prosody to its well-established association with prescriptive usage. The dictionaries we choose reveal our politics almost as quickly as the purposes to which we put them.

2) We attribute coinages to speakers on the way up the prestige ladder rather than those on their way down. Cuomo's original use of "inartful" became just another example of the Governor's bobbing and weaving (and putative liberal illiteracy) for Safire. And Safire, although a champion of literate usage and an established language maven, simply won't influence speakers on the ground. While he may use a word and define it for his plebian readers, said plebes are unlikely to take it up (or ignore it) because Safire has told us to. Thus, a first citation, while an important stop on the train toward dictionary inclusion, isn't Penn Station; it's Far Rockaway. Barack Obama has done more to cement "inartful" as a potential "word of the year" than all the Safire columns in the world.

So what does all this suggest: 1) I can't ride the subway without a map (took my daughter to the American Museum of Natural History via Queens last week); 2) I read William Safire; 3) my "dictionaries in the news" search is playing itself out. I think I need a new heuristic. Look it up. It's a lovely word.