Lectures on Tap - "The Strange and Spectacular Quest to Define Color"

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🧠 Lecture: "The Strange and Spectacular Quest to Define Color"

🎤 Speaker: Kory Stamper

Join us for a vivid evening as lexicographer Kory Stamper explores the strange, funny, and deeply human quest to define something as slippery as color. While editing dictionaries for Merriam-Webster, Stamper became obsessed with the whimsical, ultra-precise color entries in Webster’s Third—like “begonia (n.): a deep pink that is bluer than fiesta and stronger than sweet william.” Who wrote these, and what did “bluer than fiesta” even mean?

Her search leads to I. H. Godlove, a brilliant and erratic color scientist whose life traces the wild evolution of color science, color psychology, and color production across the twentieth century. Along the way come chemical explosions, office politics, unexpected romance, and facts you won’t forget—like how “puke” once named a fashionable reddish-brown.

Kory Stamper has spent nearly thirty years writing dictionaries for Merriam-Webster, Cambridge Dictionaries, and Dictionary.com, and is the author of Word by Word. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, The New York Times, New York, and The Washington Post.

Get a drink, connect, and learn at Lectures on Tap! 🙌

Agenda

6:30 PM – Doors open: find a seat (open seating!), order food & drinks, and expect a bar line—arriving early is key.

6:55 PM – Host introduction

7:00 PM – Lecture begins

7:45 PM – Audience Q&A

8:00 PM – Have 1:1 time with the speaker, mingle with fellow guests, and order another round

8:30 PM – Wrap up.

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