Ben Zimmer

Career

Zimmer graduated from Yale University in 1992 with a BA in linguistics, and went on to study linguistic anthropology at the University of Chicago. the Fulbright Program, and the Social Science Research Council. He taught at the University of California, Los Angeles; Kenyon College; and Rutgers University.

In 2005, Zimmer was named a research associate at the Institute for Research in Cognitive Science at the University of Pennsylvania and became a regular contributor to Language Log, a group weblog on language and linguistics. He was named editor for American dictionaries at Oxford University Press in 2006, and the next year launched "From A to Zimmer", a weekly lexicography column on the Oxford University Press blog.

In 2008, Zimmer was appointed executive producer of the Visual Thesaurus, an interactive reference tool from Thinkmap, Inc. He edits the online content of the Visual Thesaurus and its sister site Vocabulary.com, and writes a regular column on word origins, "Word Routes".

Zimmer's research on word origins was frequently cited by William Safire's "On Language" column for The New York Times Magazine. On March 11, 2010, Magazine editor Gerald Marzorati announced Zimmer's appointment as the new "On Language" columnist, succeeding Safire, the founding and regular columnist until his death in late 2009. Zimmer's last "On Language" column was published on February 27, 2011. In it, Zimmer wrote that the column was "finally coming to a close" and that "it [was] time to bid adieu, after some 1,500 dispatches from the frontiers of language."

On December 18, 2011, The Boston Globe announced that Zimmer would be a regular language columnist for the newspaper's Sunday Ideas section. His Globe column continued until June 28, 2013, when he began a new weekly language column for The Wall Street Journal Saturday Review section, "Word on the Street".

Zimmer's writing on language has appeared in two blog anthologies: Ultimate Blogs (Vintage, 2008, ) and Far from the Madding Gerund (William, James, 2006, ). He has also written for Slate, The New York Times Book Review, The New York Times Sunday Review, and The Atlantic.

Zimmer is the chair of the American Dialect Society's New Words Committee and has served on the society's Executive Council. He is also a member of the Dictionary Society of North America.

The Linguistic Society of America gave Zimmer its first ever Linguistics Journalism Award in 2014. In January 2017, Zimmer was one of the speakers in the LSA's inaugural Public Lectures on Language series.

Personal life

Zimmer lives in Jersey City, New Jersey with his wife and a son. He is the brother of science writer Carl Zimmer and the son of former New Jersey congressman Dick Zimmer.

Notes

References

1. Yaccino, Steven. (May–June 2011). "Away with words". University of Chicago Magazine.
2. Zimmer, Ben. "Ben Zimmer".
3. "Ben Zimmer".
4. "About Ben Zimmer".
5. (1997-06-12). "Graduate students lead nation in Fulbright awards". University of Chicago Chronicle.
6. (1999-06-10). "Graduate students receive the most Fulbrights". University of Chicago Chronicle.
7. "International Dissertation Research Fellowships, 1999 Fellows". [[Social Science Research Council]].
8. "Author profile, Benjamin Zimmer". [[University of Pennsylvania]].
9. Newman, Andrew Adam. (2007-11-10). "How Dictionaries Define Publicity: The Word of the Year". [[The New York Times]].
10. Grathwohl, Casper. (2007-06-27). "It's Coming... An A To Zimmer Introduction". [[Oxford University Press]].
11. (2008-08-21). "Editor for American Dictionaries at Oxford joins Visual Thesaurus Team". Thinkmap, Inc..
12. (2010-03-11). "The New York Times Magazine Names Ben Zimmer as 'On Language' Columnist". [[Business Wire]].
13. Zimmer, Ben. (2011-12-18). "What we talked about in 2011". [[The Boston Globe]].
14. Zimmer, Ben. (2013-06-28). "'Cyber' Dons A Uniform". [[The Wall Street Journal]].
15. Kamp, David. (2008-03-23). "Permalinks". [[The New York Times Book Review]].
16. (2007-12-17). "Nonfiction Reviews". [[Publishers Weekly]].
17. "Introduction". William, James.
18. "Table of Contents, ''Far from the Madding Gerund''". [[Library of Congress]].
19. "Articles by Ben Zimmer". [[Slate (magazine).
20. Zimmer, Ben. (2011-07-29). "The Jargon of the Novel, Computed". [[The New York Times Book Review]].
21. Zimmer, Ben. (2011-10-29). "Twitterology: A New Science?". [[The New York Times]] Sunday Review.
22. "Articles by Ben Zimmer". [[The Atlantic]].
23. (15 January 2010). "Media Queries". [[American Dialect Society]].
24. Marzorati, Gerald. (2010-03-21). "On Language With Ben Zimmer". [[The New York Times]].
25. "WSJ's Ben Zimmer receives first LSA Linguistics Journalism Award". Linguistics Society of America.
26. [http://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/lsa-public-lectures-language-series LSA Public Lectures on Language Series]
27. (8 September 2015). "Zimmer Down, Boys". [[Observer.com]].