The first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary debuted in 1888; it was missing the word “bondmaid.” It took 50 years to ...

Dictionaries are deceptively simple, and incredibly ambitious. NPR's Don Gonyea talks to Stefan Fatsis about his book, "Unabridged: The Thrill of (and Threat to) The Modern Dictionary." ...

World Dictionary Day takes place on October 16, the birthday of the American lexicographer Noah Webster, whose enormous, two-volume An American Dictionary of the English Language—published in 1828, ...

Just to work from "A" to "ant" took the original Oxford English Dictionary team around 10 years. They thought they'd reach "Z" in that time — but gathering definitions for hundreds of thousands of ...

Exploring the evolution of dictionaries in the digital age and the enduring value of printed dictionaries in language ...

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 ...

Rastell’s law dictionary was the first English language dictionary of any type, with its alphabetical arrangement of terms and their definitions. First published in Anglo-Norman French around 1523 as ...

The word was coined in the 1930s, probably by the president of the National Puzzlers’ League, “in imitation of polysyllabic medical terms,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, “but occurring ...

Samuel Johnson, often referred to as Dr Johnson, was a writer, poet, and essayist, and is credited with being one of the most quoted people in the English language after Shakespeare. But he is best ...

A word which baffled the producers of the latest series of Race Across the World is among 10 Welsh words to be added to the ...

The Oxford English Dictionary has updated its definition of the word “woman” in its latest gender review, after complaints it was “sexist”. In the latest edition of the world-famous dictionary it has ...