Linguistics Club invite Speaker Peter Sokolowski to Deerfield

On Sunday, February 16, 2025, the Linguistics Club invited guest speaker Peter Sokolowski, an editor at Merriam-Webster, to Deerfield. Interested in his work on the Word of the Day podcasts, the Linguistics Club sent him a cold email during the Fall Term and unexpectedly received his agreement to come to the Academy and deliver a speech. 

Sokolowski presented on how people attach connotations of intelligence and wealth to words originating from French and Latin, as opposed to words with Anglo-Germanic roots. He also described the significant impact historical context has on English culture. He emphasized the usage of Latin words in strong legalistic documents, speeches, and the U.S. Constitution. He ended his speech by debunking common language and cultural myths of King Arthur and Robin Hood and the misuse of “literally” and “unique.”

Mr. Sokolowski did not originally intend to become a dictionary editor. Before he started his career at Merriam-Webster, he was planning on getting a doctorate degree and becoming a professor of French. He said, “I have a special love for French. You know, obviously French is my first language. My partner is French, so we speak French at home.” Yet, his studies made him a prime candidate for his current role as an editor specializing in words with French origins. “I didn't know this was a job, even when it was advertised…and it's one of those things where I tripped into. It seems cool to people now, but it wasn't when I got the job” he recalled.

One major project he worked on was creating The Word of the Day podcasts. After a rapid ascent in the popularity of the Word of the Day newspaper column, a marketing executive in Merriam-Webster suggested turning the project into a podcast. Initially reluctant to join, Mr. Sokolowski was persuaded after realizing that working on the project required a vast knowledge of linguistics and that having to check and train a marketer to speak "Latin, Greek and Old English, occasionally Celtic, Italian, and German,” he said, was “just not worth it.” 

Despite his experience, he acknowledged the challenge of recording each word in one run, often making mistakes along the way. “Sometimes I just spell the damn word wrong. One time I was in Brazil, and someone wrote to me in the morning saying, “You forgot the ‘e’ in this [word].” And luckily, there's a guy in the office who knew someone who could edit it…There was one week in 2006 where I did every word in one take, the first time completely. And I've only done that once in 19 years,” Mr. Sokolowski recalled.  

Language Teacher Brian Hunt enjoys the word of the day podcast because it helps him build his vocabulary and learn something new. “There is this desire to become a lifelong learner which Deerfield hopes to instill in students. And Merriam-Webster and the Word of the Day is one of those moments where you could almost learn something every single day just by listening to podcasts like that,” Mr. Hunt said.  

While Mr. Sokolowski currently focuses on the French dictionary, he also serves as the spokesperson for Merriam-Webster, often attending news conferences, hosting public radio shows, and pronouncing the words for worldwide spelling bees. He explained why the dictionary needs a spokesperson, saying “Sometimes there are controversial questions that have to do with, say, gender identity or offensive terms. And I'll get a call from the New York Times or from NPR and we want that answer to be the same for whoever asks.” Nowadays, he views his job as “the storyteller of the dictionary.” Outside of his job, he is working on publishing a biography of the dictionary under the Saint Martin Press temporarily titled By Definition: The Cultural History of the Dictionary. 

Sasha Diamond ’25 commented on how the topics Mr. Sokolowski chose to address and enabled him to learn about the vocabulary and richness of English. “I think his idea of English having multiple registers and almost like different sets of vocabulary was really interesting,” Diamond said. “We almost have two to three sets of adjectives or words to describe the same thing, whereas, in French or some other Romance languages that don't have the same amount of influence from external or loan words.”

Diamonds further commented about how the presentation changed his view on the role of dictionaries. saying “I really didn't know how the dictionary worked or what the jobs of different dictionary editors were like, how it's been impacted by the internet which I guess we kind of take for granted, how the dictionary is just there. We don't think of all the work that goes into it, and it's very much an active process of compiling and defining.”

Dr. Hunt commented on how passionate Mr. Sokolowski is in his field of work while delivering the captivating keynote, “I think when anybody shows their passion or sort of geek out, it is, always as an educator, exciting to see, because that's the thing that sort of got me into the field that I study, was seeing people who are impassioned, and he was clearly loves what he does.” 

Dr. Hunt also expresses his desire for clubs and the Academy to welcome more linguists to deliver speeches. He suggests the possibility of welcoming Mr. Sokolowski back to campus and organizing a larger event in collaboration with the language department.