Butter Lamb News

The Butter Lamb News

Looking for the skinny on what's in the next issue of The Butter Lamb News? Want to know what was in issues you might have missed? Looking for PDFs of past issues? If you answered "yes" to any of those questions, then you've come to the right place! Now stop talking to yourself and read on!

Issue #4 (current issue) - Issue #4 of the BLN is bigger and better than ever thanks to a new, larger format
and color ink cartridges. And then there's the content! If you thought this shit was nerdy before, well then
get a load of this issue! (16 pages, 8.5 X 11, full color)

My Choice for Word of the Year? "Stop" - References don't need to pander to the Twitterverse or chase
the digital-age currency of clicks, likes, and shares by latching on the latest, most fire AF slang because,
they have not lost any their relevance. This is how I know.

Dictionaries and References in the News - Time operas; Removing words from the dictionary; Weed
slang; Oxford to release dictionary of African-American English; dictionary of Gen Z dating terms;
Merriam-Webster adds a bunch of new words; and the famed Kripke Collection finds a new home; and
dictionary lovers waxing philosophic.

New Words and Phrases (or words and phrases new to me) - Productivity paranoia, loud laborer, boyfriend air, wife guy, mufti, snackification movement, appurtenances, beetle-browed, eigengrau, fin-de-siecle, and grisaille, labile, lemniscate, and lunule.

Reference- (and reference like) and Word-Related Publications Received - Anachronisms, Hypno Video, Just a Jefferson, Ritual View, and Word of the Day
Plus, new Arrivals to the Butter Lamb Reference Library and a slew of reader letters!

Issue #3 - Bigger than issue #2 (but not quite as big as issue #4), the third installment of the BLN gives you
even more bang for your buck (which is a funny thing to say about a free newsletter). This issue's contents
run the gamut (what the fuck is a gamut?) from tips on how to make the most of your references (with a little
help from John McPhee) and reader letters to references in the news and new words. Dig it! (32 pages,
half-size legal, B+W)

Let References Help: In addition to telling us what words mean, a good dictionary can also help us
choose the best word … or so says John McPhee

Reader Letters … or letter

New Words and Phrases (or Words and Phrases new to me): Newfangled workplace words, psychological
disorders, and other words and phrases of interest from "book shy" to "bezoar."

Dictionaries and References in the News: Dictionaries banned in prison, threats against Merriam-Webster for tinkering with gender-related definitions, school districts rejecting dictionary donations, and the number of words invented by Shakespeare in question

New Additions to the BLRL: Dictionaries of literary symbols, word origins, proverbs, war, "rediscovered" words (not), and the future in America.

It Came from the PO Box: Zine reviews
And a trip down memory lane … or so I thought … in The Last Word

Issue #2 - This issue continues the trend launched by the BLN's speculative first issue! But if you think issue
#2 steps out cautiously, forget it! The contents of Issue #2 deliver some "tough lessons" from dictionaries
and then rage on with diatribes about the (modern) insult "basic" and other hot button words. Check it out!
(24 pages, half-size legal, B+W)

More on descriptivism vs. prescriptivism … through the lens of Star Wars

Reader letters on tax tokens, reactions to cheugy, problems with my punctuation, and more.

New Words and Phrases (or Words and Phrases new to me): Basic, dazzle, Gasconade,
hurkle-durkle, Idioglossia, lachrymose, mission statement, and more.

Dictionaries and References in the News: People with low emotional intelligence use this phrase,
thesaurus history, new words added to Merriam-Webster's dictionary, and who is and isn't a "victim."

New Additions to the BLRL: Dictionaries on rhyming, lexicography (why not?), geek slang, classical mythology, modern thought, obscure words, and dreams. I also speak of Dreyer's English and the fictional Liar's Dictionary.

Issue #1 - The zine that started it all and unleashed Big Dictionary Energy on the masses! This well-
reviewed little guy set the tone for later issues with the first installments of Front Matter, Dictionaries
and References in the News, New Words and Phrases, Additions to the BLRL, and more. Get a copy
and see how it all began! (24 pages, digest-size, B+W)

Front Matter: Yes, Virginia, Dictionary Forewards can be Fascinating!

Dictionaries and References in the News: Defining life, the link between COVID-19 and dictionaries,
and bad words and artificial intelligence

New Words and Phrases: Cheugy, chuffed, pflug, phub, smize (and the cult of the green M&M), and zaftig

New Additions to the BLRL: Dictionaries on or for the highly literate, linguistics and phonetics, the F-word,
religions and secular faiths, abbreviations, books, psychoanalysis, and political thought.

Reviews of the Butter Lamb News:

Wondering what others have said about The Butter Lamb News? Here are some reviews!

Not in bulky, dusty tomes, but in diminutive zine form, Joseph Smith presents The Butter Lamb News, “the Official Publication of the Dictionary Appreciation Society of Laurel, Maryland and the Butter Lamb Reference Library.” As stuffy as that sounds, Smith is dealing in true nerd zine territory, not in stodgy bookman bullshit.

The Butter Lamb News stakes out a delightfully bookish zine niche, championing print dictionaries over their digital conquerors, even while acknowledging the battle is lost. Still, print dictionaries, like zines, have certain characteristics that can never be replaced. In a single print volume (or several) the dictionary’s user is treated to a scope, a method, a philosophy. Not the willy-nilly definitions of whatever might rise to the top of a search engine’s algorithm. As Smith explains, lexicographers take positions ... between the prescriptivist camp of dictionary editors and the descriptivists, or, those who define words in order to prescribe how language ought to be used versus those who give definitions that describe how words are actually used.

Lexicographers choose a lane somewhere between these two poles, and publish a wide spectrum of dictionaries. Smith does a great job of illuminating this context, making it accessible and fascinating, opening up what might otherwise seem to be a narrow subject for a zine. Smith’s zine is primarily text, with a few images like black and white reproductions of dictionary covers. It is far from boring, though.

Additional articles offer up more lexicographical nuance, like a short piece on the ethical quandaries of defining life, the ways dictionary usage statistics can reveal timely human concerns (like all the COVID-related words we’ve been looking up), how words like “cheugy” and “phubbed” make their way into definable usage. Finally, Smith includes a venerable mainstay of zines: the review section — reviewing dictionaries recently acquired for the Butter Lamb Reference Library. Smith’s writing is fun, down to earth and pretty hilarious throughout, poking fun at language and language geeks, while also embracing and celebrating the nerdiness of it all.

-- Joshua Barton, Broken Pencil.com, January 24, 2023

THE BUTTER LAMB REFERENCE LIBRARY exists to proclaim the good news of reference books as a source of trustworthy information to challenge misconception, confront willful ignorance, and provide answers to an astonishing array of questions be they serious, silly. or something in between I picked this up at bedtime to read for 5 minutes, but I couldn't put it down until I was finished, more than an hour later, Joe publishes letters and zine reviews, but the main focus is on dictionaries and other reference books, which he compares and reviews He always has a column on new words. This issue had really interesting articles about paragraphs and protesters.

-- Markell Raphaelson West, Xerography Debt issue #53

Regular readers know I love obsessive zines. This falls into that category. This is "The Official Publication of the Dictionary Appreciation Society of Laurel, Maryland and the Butter Lamb Reference Library'. It is an entire zine devoted to dictionaries! New words, old words,and the politics of etymology. it is all here. I loved this.

-- Davida Gypsy Breier, Xerography Debt issue #52

Joe has mentioned his love for dictionaries in his other zine ALTERNATIVE INCITE, but I didn't really understand how much he loved them until I received THE BUTTER LAMB NEWS #1: THE OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF THE DICTIONARY APPRECIATION SOCIETY OF LAUREL, MARYLAND AND THE BUTTER LAMB REFERENCE LIBRARY,. Joe's mission with this new project is "to procaim the good news of reference books as a source of trustworthy information to challenge misconceptions. confront willful ignorance, and provide answers to an astonishing array of questions be they serious, silly, or something in between. loe writes about how the pandemic is changing how artificial intelligence is being trained to interact with (or completely ignore) dirty words how an artist is fighting to end misogyy he words people search for in online dictionaries in dictionary entries, and more There's a ton of great stuff in here. Checkit out!

-- Kris Mininger, Xerography Debt issue #51

Here's something new from the editor of ALTERNATIVE INCITE. the zine devoted to encouraging creativity, And guess what? It has plenty to do with creativity as well. When you were in school [or at home doing your homework) and someone said that you should look it up. you probably pouted just a bit because you didn't want to slog through a dictionary, right? Well, who would've guessed? Dictionaries can be fascinating things, so Joe may be opening your eyes to an entirely new world here! We begin at the literal beginning: dictionary forewords, which almost nobody reads but they should. My favorite piece in the zine is "Say What? New Words and Phrases. New words and phrases are entering the language all the time, since let's face it, language isn't static. lncluded in this article are cheugy, pfilug, and phubber. If I may make a public suggestion here to Joe, how's about looking in the opposite direction in some future issue and presenting archaic words that still hang around the language? (I personally have always liked yclept, for which you have to go back to Medieval times]). Finally, there's a listing of new additions to the Butter Lamb Reference Library Collection, which makes sense because there are more different kinds of references than you might expect. And so - surprise! - here's another zine review wherein I suggest that you get a copy of this as soon as you can.

-- Fred Argoff, Xerography Debt issue #51

If you love words (and I suspect you doed) you will LOVE this zine. Joe3 writes about words, about books about words, and about articles and essays about words. I find myself nodding along not because it has a great beat but because I am agreeing with his statements about...words! [For example, he writes about] The usefulnes of a thesaurus when accompanied by a few good dictionaries to be sure I am using che RIGHT word for what I am trying to say! That an encyclopedia may have been aspirational not ornarmental! There are essays, letters to the editor, new words for Joe3, and more. I, too, was annoyed at the arrival of the term "Quiet Quitting" having been a SLACKER in the 90s! There are some articles about dictionaries and references in the news including mention of some maniac who was threatening employees of a dictionary publisher because of the words they defined! There are some new additions to the library, all of which sound intriguing, and a handful of zines reviews. The last word is from Guy Verbose, Existential Lexicographical Private Eye which was thought provoking on several different fronts. Excellent and Strongly Recommended. 32pp, half legal digest.

-- Node Pajomo, issue 2.8

Joe 3 recently sent me a copy of his newest zine creation, The Butter Lamb News, it's already up to issue 3. It's the sarne size and looks similar to his previous Alternative Incite, back issues of which are still available by visiting www.butterlamb.org. That's also where youl be able to order this new title. This time around, we see some readers' letters of comment, and learn of some new words and phrases that have attracted Joe's attention, followed by some very fascinating news articles about dictionaries. Who would have imagined that anyone could make reading about dictionaries so much fun? Joe has done just that! There are some zine reviews, and finally, part of what appears to be an original work of fiction from Joe (to be continued on his website).

--The Ken Chronicles, No. 66