Putting together a dictionary is hard. Or if you prefer, difficile or Augean. It’s one of those indispensable elements of civilization that many of us take for granted, like electricity. But its ...
An excerpt from Dictionary People investigates the story of amateurs collaborating alongside the academic elite to create a foundation for our vocabulary. Every item on this page was chosen by a Town ...
Every year a handful of new words make it into the dictionary, but how do they get there and who chooses them? Kory Stamper, a lexicographer for Merriam Webster, explains to us just how our ...
Noah Webster published A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language in 1806. His 1828 follow-up contained 70,000 entries. By 1864, the collection had 114,000 ...