Once, every middle-class home had a piano and a dictionary. The purpose of the piano was to be able to listen to music before phonographs were available and affordable. Later on, it was to torture ...

When I turned 13, I entered a part of the life cycle cherished by all Jewish kids and dreaded by their parents. This was the year of bar and bat mitzvahs—my own, but also those of friends, relatives, ...

An ogham stone in Cornwall, England BabelStone via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 3.0 Researchers say they are compiling the first-ever dictionary of ancient Celtic languages in Britain and Ireland.

The Kremlin has a new "Explanatory Dictionary of the State Language of the Russian Federation." We look into some of the revised definitions of common words. Russia is doing this. They've published a ...

As slang finds its way into lexical institutions, experts ponder its place on the internet. By Julia Carpenter There was a time when Urban Dictionary felt essential. Twenty-six years ago, when ...

A groundbreaking new monolingual Irish dictionary by Foras na Gaeilge, the body responsible for the promotion of the Irish language throughout the island of Ireland, was launched this week by ...

There are more than half a million words in the Oxford English Dictionary. Some trace their origin as far back as the 11th century. For centuries, linguists and academics have kept careful track of ...

Here's some news for the word nerds out there. Merriam-Webster, the country’s oldest dictionary publisher, is releasing a hefty, new Collegiate edition for the first time in 22 years. “So, the ...

If you look up “microaggression” or “sheeple” or “safe space” on the website of the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the entries won’t have a byline—but their author is Stefan Fatsis. A longtime journalist ...

The new edition might remind people that a physical book from a source with a two-century-old pedigree might be more trustworthy than a random search. Stefan Fatsis is the author of “Unabridged: The ...

If you click on links we provide, we may receive compensation. Newer terms like 'cold brew' and 'farm-to-table' plus slang like 'rizz' are just a few of the new words readers can expected to see added ...

Merriam-Webster on Thursday announced it will add more than 5,000 new words and 1,000 new phrases when the 12th edition of the Collegiate Dictionary hits bookshelves on Nov. 18 — marking its first new ...