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Lex education

Q: I recently received a list of the finalists in a wordplay contest for lexophiles. The winner: “Those who get too big for their pants will be totally exposed in the end.” So, what can you say about the term “lexophile”? I love a clever turn of aphasia.

A: That wordplay list, which has been making the rounds online, purports to be from an annual New York Times lexophile contest. As far as we know, the Times has never had such a contest. In fact, we couldn’t find the word “lexophile” in a search of the newspaper’s archive.

We also couldn’t find “lexophile” in the Oxford English Dictionary or any of the 10 standard dictionaries we regularly consult. However, we did find it in two collaborative references, the often helpful Wiktionary and the idiosyncratic Urban Dictionary.

Wiktionary defines “lexophile” as “a lover of words, especially in word games, puzzles, anagrams, palindromes, etc.” The elements are Greek: “lex-” from λέξις (lexis, word), and “-phile” from ϕίλος (philos, loving).

One contributor to Urban Dictionary defines “lexophile” as “a lover of cryptic words,” while another defines “lexiphile” as “a word used to describe those that have a love for words.”

A more common noun for a word lover, “logophile,” is found in eight standard dictionaries as well as the OED, which is an etymological dictionary. The element “log-” is from the Greek λόγος (logos, word); both logos and lexis are derived from λέγειν (legein, to speak).

The earliest OED citation for “logophile” is from the Feb. 1, 1959, issue of the Sunday Times (London): “We are pretty sure that since all Sunday Times readers are natural and inveterate logophiles … he [the lexicographer R. W. Burchfield] will get some invaluable assistance.”

We’ve found an earlier example for “logophile” in a California newspaper, but the term was used to mean someone who loves to talk, not someone who loves words: “One who loves to talk, but does not carry it to the point of mania, is a logophile, pronounced: LOG-uh-file” (San Bernardino Sun, Jan. 17, 1951).

Interestingly, the noun logophile appeared in French in the mid-19th century with a similar voluble sense. Dictionnaire National ou Dictionnaire Universel de la Langue Française (1850), by Louis-Nicolas Bescherelle, defines a logophile as “Qui aime à parler, à faire de longs discours.”

Merriam-Webster says the first known use of “logophile” in English was in 1923, but it doesn’t include a citation. We haven’t been able to find any examples earlier than the mid-20th century.

As for your “clever turn of aphasia,” the less said the better.

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