You define me.

During my senior year of college, when I realized I might want to work in publishing, I interned over winter break at Merriam-Webster. Before then, I had no idea the dictionary gurus were headquartered 20 minutes from my hometown.

On my first day, my boss gave me a tour of the building. We turned the corner from the computer lab and entered a room full of tiny cubicles and the biggest card catalog I've ever seen. "These are the definers," she said.

The definers? It sounded like the most powerful job in the universe. Turns out it's done by a bunch of twentysomethings who spend all day reading magazines, websites, newspapers, and books. When they notice a new word appearing frequently, they write all its sources on an index card and put it in the card catalog. (This is probably done on computers by now, but I kind of hope not.)

When it comes time to update the company's collegiate dictionary, about every five years, they go through all the words in the catalog to see which ones are still in common usage. Then they nominate the most popular—and, I'd like to imagine, the most logical—for inclusion. I forget how many make the cut, but I think it's no more than 25 or so per new edition.

I'm remembering this today because Laurence Urdang just died. According to his obituary, he edited more than 100 dictionaries, including the first edition of the Random House Dictionary of the English Language, which weighed around nine pounds. "Mr. Urdang’s view of language," writes the NYT, "was that of an enjoyer, someone who delighted in its flexibility and invention, rather than that of a guardian always on alert against violations of precedent."

It's my job to be a guardian on high alert, so it's good to be reminded of the incredible pleasure inherent in working with words. Mr. Urdang, sleep well. You're my kind of definer.