The Dictionary Wars! with Gabe Henry
11/11/20251 hr 12 min
Remember being a teen and coming up with “cool” ways of spelling common words? Well, just like the teenager it was, the United States in the 18th century was annoying their mom, England, with the hip words that were being edited and added to their lexicon. The antagonistic pair of nations on the brink of the Revolutionary War were always competing to prove their superiority and independence in small cultural battles, and words themselves were no different.
Fellow word-nerd Gabe Henry, author of Enough Is Enuf: Our Failed Attempts to Make English Easier to Spell, joins Sarah as they chummily pun their way through the story of the 18th century Dictionary Wars, the story of the publishing battles fought between a handful of eccentric word-lovers in The US and England, all vying for the future supremacy of their own spellings. Digressions include crop circles from Unsolved Mysteries, dishonest detergent marketing, and old fashioned sock puppet accounts.
More Gabe Henry:
Enough Is Enuf: Our Failed Attempts to Make English Easier to Spell
Produced + edited by Miranda Zickler
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Transcript preview
First 90 secondsSarah Marshall· Host0:00
That sounds like a country song, doesn't it? I ain't yet quite right for your orthography. (instrumental music plays) Welcome to You're Wrong About, the podcast where sometimes we talk about all of our favorite words, and with me today is our guest ofjour, Gabe Henry, who is here to talk about the dictionary wars, which are not as violent as they might sound, but very petty, which is better. Gabe has a book out now called Enuf Is Enuf. That second "enough" is spelled E-N-U-F. You'll know why soon. The subtitle is, Our Failed Attempts to Make English Easier to Spell, and this is a book that recently made me chortle in an IKEA food court, where I like to go to relax. As you know, or maybe you don't know, I have another show coming out right now from CBC Podcasts. It's a miniseries called The Devil You Know. It's about, what else? The Satanic Panic, and episode four is out this week. I really hope you check it out. I hope that you can find some comfort in history and in learning about the courageous people who have been living through moral panics a long time before this current one, and I'm so happy to get to share this show with you. Speaking of things I'm excited to share with you, we also have a fabulous bonus episode on the word origins of "bimbos."