Sol Steinmetz
Encyclopedia
Sol Steinmetz was a Hungarian American
linguistics
and lexicography
expert who wrote extensively about etymologies
, definitions and uncovered earliest recorded usages of words in English
and Yiddish. A widely sought source on all things lexical, he earned recognition from William Safire
in his On Language
column in The New York Times Magazine
in 2006 as a "lexical supermaven
".
Steinmetz was born in Budapest
on July 29, 1930, and emigrated from Hungary
before the outbreak of World War II
to the United States
with brief intervals spent in the Dominican Republic
and Venezuela
. He earned his undergraduate degree from Yeshiva University
with a major in English and received his semikhah (rabbinic ordination) from YU's Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary
. He supported himself as a hazzan
while he studied linguistics at Columbia University
where he trained under Yiddish scholar Uriel Weinreich
, before leaving graduate school to take a post as rabbi of a synagogue in Media, Pennsylvania
.
He worked for publishers Merriam-Webster
and Clarence Barnhart
before moving to Random House
, where he oversaw Random House Webster's College Dictionary as the executive editor of the firm's dictionary division. As part of his lexicographical research, he found such first uses as the sense of the metonymous
use of the word "suit
" to mean a bureaucrat which he found attributed to a 1982 episode of Cagney and Lacey.
His work was sought out by reporters and writers and was widely cited in William Safire's On Language column in The New York Times Magazine, where he was credited as being a member of "Olbom" (On Language's Board of Octogenarian Mentors), despite his age. His writings include works on Yiddish such as the 1986 book "Yiddish and English: A Century of Yiddish in America" and the 2002 work "Meshuggenary: Celebrating the World of Yiddish" which he wrote with Charles M. Levine and Payson R. Stevens. Books aimed at the general market include the 2008 release of "Semantic Antics: How and Why Words Change Meaning", a book that Safire called his "favorite popular word book of the year", noting the derivations that Steinmetz provided for the words "cartel" and "nude". His final book was "There's a Word for It: The Explosion of the American Language Since 1900", published by Harmony Books
in the year he died.
A resident of New Rochelle, New York
, died in Manhattan
at the age of 80 on October 13, 2010, due to pneumonia
. He was survived by his wife, the former Tzipora Mandel, who he married in 1955, as well as three sons, 12 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Jesse Sheidlower
of the Oxford English Dictionary
credited Steinmetz as someone who "never had a bad word to say about anyone", despite the fact that "he knew a lot of bad words".
Hungarian American
Hungarian Americans Hungarian are American citizens of Hungarian descent. The constant influx of Hungarian immigrants was marked by several waves of sharp increase.-History:...
linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
and lexicography
Lexicography
Lexicography is divided into two related disciplines:*Practical lexicography is the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionaries....
expert who wrote extensively about etymologies
Etymology
Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time.For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts in these languages and texts about the languages to gather knowledge about how words were used during...
, definitions and uncovered earliest recorded usages of words in English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
and Yiddish. A widely sought source on all things lexical, he earned recognition from William Safire
William Safire
William Lewis Safire was an American author, columnist, journalist and presidential speechwriter....
in his On Language
On Language
On Language was a regular column in the weekly New York Times Magazine on the English language discussing popular etymology, new or unusual usages, and other language-related topics. The inaugural column was published on February 18, 1979 and it was a regular popular feature...
column in The New York Times Magazine
The New York Times Magazine
The New York Times Magazine is a Sunday magazine supplement included with the Sunday edition of The New York Times. It is host to feature articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors...
in 2006 as a "lexical supermaven
Maven
A maven is a trusted expert in a particular field, who seeks to pass knowledge on to others. The word maven comes from Hebrew, via Yiddish, and means one who understands, based on an accumulation of knowledge.-History:...
".
Steinmetz was born in Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
on July 29, 1930, and emigrated from Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
before the outbreak of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
with brief intervals spent in the Dominican Republic
Dominican Republic
The Dominican Republic is a nation on the island of La Hispaniola, part of the Greater Antilles archipelago in the Caribbean region. The western third of the island is occupied by the nation of Haiti, making Hispaniola one of two Caribbean islands that are shared by two countries...
and Venezuela
Venezuela
Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...
. He earned his undergraduate degree from Yeshiva University
Yeshiva University
Yeshiva University is a private university in New York City, with six campuses in New York and one in Israel. Founded in 1886, it is a research university ranked as 45th in the US among national universities by U.S. News & World Report in 2012...
with a major in English and received his semikhah (rabbinic ordination) from YU's Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary
Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary
Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary , or Yeshivat Rabbeinu Yitzchak Elchanan, is the rabbinical seminary of Yeshiva University, located in Washington Heights, New York. It is named after Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor, who died the year it was founded, 1896...
. He supported himself as a hazzan
Hazzan
A hazzan or chazzan is a Jewish cantor, a musician trained in the vocal arts who helps lead the congregation in songful prayer.There are many rules relating to how a cantor should lead services, but the idea of a cantor as a paid professional does not exist in classical rabbinic sources...
while he studied linguistics at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
where he trained under Yiddish scholar Uriel Weinreich
Uriel Weinreich
Uriel Weinreich was a linguist at Columbia University. Born in Vilnius , he earned his Ph.D. from Columbia, and went on to teach there, specializing in Yiddish studies, sociolinguistics, and dialectology...
, before leaving graduate school to take a post as rabbi of a synagogue in Media, Pennsylvania
Media, Pennsylvania
The borough of Media is the county seat of Delaware County, Pennsylvania and is located west of Philadelphia. Media was incorporated in 1850 at the same time that it was named the county seat. The population was 5,533 at the 2000 census. Its school district is the Rose Tree Media School District...
.
He worked for publishers Merriam-Webster
Merriam-Webster
Merriam–Webster, which was originally the G. & C. Merriam Company of Springfield, Massachusetts, is an American company that publishes reference books, especially dictionaries that are descendants of Noah Webster’s An American Dictionary of the English Language .Merriam-Webster Inc. has been a...
and Clarence Barnhart
Clarence Barnhart
Clarence Lewis Barnhart was an American lexicographer best known for writing the Thorndike-Barnhart series of graded dictionaries, which were based on word lists developed by psychological theorist Edward Thorndike....
before moving to Random House
Random House
Random House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...
, where he oversaw Random House Webster's College Dictionary as the executive editor of the firm's dictionary division. As part of his lexicographical research, he found such first uses as the sense of the metonymous
Metonymy
Metonymy is a figure of speech used in rhetoric in which a thing or concept is not called by its own name, but by the name of something intimately associated with that thing or concept...
use of the word "suit
Suit (clothing)
In clothing, a suit is a set of garments made from the same cloth, consisting of at least a jacket and trousers. Lounge suits are the most common style of Western suit, originating in the United Kingdom as country wear...
" to mean a bureaucrat which he found attributed to a 1982 episode of Cagney and Lacey.
His work was sought out by reporters and writers and was widely cited in William Safire's On Language column in The New York Times Magazine, where he was credited as being a member of "Olbom" (On Language's Board of Octogenarian Mentors), despite his age. His writings include works on Yiddish such as the 1986 book "Yiddish and English: A Century of Yiddish in America" and the 2002 work "Meshuggenary: Celebrating the World of Yiddish" which he wrote with Charles M. Levine and Payson R. Stevens. Books aimed at the general market include the 2008 release of "Semantic Antics: How and Why Words Change Meaning", a book that Safire called his "favorite popular word book of the year", noting the derivations that Steinmetz provided for the words "cartel" and "nude". His final book was "There's a Word for It: The Explosion of the American Language Since 1900", published by Harmony Books
Harmony Books
Harmony Books is an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, itself part of publisher Random House. It focusses on topics such as religion, the occult, the paranormal and other pseudoscientific material...
in the year he died.
A resident of New Rochelle, New York
New Rochelle, New York
New Rochelle is a city in Westchester County, New York, United States, in the southeastern portion of the state.The town was settled by refugee Huguenots in 1688 who were fleeing persecution in France...
, died in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
at the age of 80 on October 13, 2010, due to pneumonia
Pneumonia
Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung—especially affecting the microscopic air sacs —associated with fever, chest symptoms, and a lack of air space on a chest X-ray. Pneumonia is typically caused by an infection but there are a number of other causes...
. He was survived by his wife, the former Tzipora Mandel, who he married in 1955, as well as three sons, 12 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Jesse Sheidlower
Jesse Sheidlower
Jesse Sheidlower is an author and editor specializing in English linguistics and lexicography. From 1999 until 2005 he was Principal North American Editor at the Oxford English Dictionary; since 2005 he has been an editor-at-large, focusing on North American usage. He is a frequently cited expert...
of the Oxford English Dictionary
Oxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...
credited Steinmetz as someone who "never had a bad word to say about anyone", despite the fact that "he knew a lot of bad words".