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TUESDAY

The Oxford English Dictionary wants your mots justes. Don’t know what that means? Look it up. Echoing the 1879 plea of early OED editor James Murray, Chief Editor John Simpson is calling on readers to contribute their own words to the dictionary. And you can even submit your neologisms through the Internet. Think that’s crazy? Murray’s appeal yielded 80,000 submissions, the most surprising of which may have come from asylum inmate Dr. William C. Minor, whose life is examined in Simon Winchester’s universally praised 1998 work of nonfiction, The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary. Tonight, Simpson and Winchester will discuss revising the OED and bringing it online, after which Winchester will sign copies of The Professor. If you want Simpson’s autograph, you’d better pick your favorite volume and leave the other 19 at home. At 6 p.m. at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden’s Ring Auditorium, 7th and Independence Avenue SW. $13. For reservations call (202) 357-3030. (Amanda Fazzone)