Dictionaries are deceptively simple, and incredibly ambitious. NPR's Don Gonyea talks to Stefan Fatsis about his book, ...

BEYOND cavil, this portly and handsome volume makes good the claim which is set forth on the title-page. The revision which the old edition has undergone is manifestly a most thorough one, extending ...

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

At the risk of showing my age, I will admit that I began school before the advent of spell-check. When I didn't know how to spell a word, my teachers told me to look it up in the dictionary. I never ...

Black Americans have long contributed to the ways in which the English language is used. A new research project aims to compile the first Oxford Dictionary of African American English. Black people ...

Oxford University Press has announced a large-scale study that will culminate in the Oxford Dictionary of African American English, the brainchild of historian Henry Louis Gates that will focus on the ...

Since the 1960s, the reference book has cataloged how people actually use language, not how they should. That might be changing. An Object Lesson. That symbolic importance is summed up in the phrase ...

She collaborated with two professors at Gallaudet University on the first ASL dictionary, laying the groundwork for a flourishing in Deaf identity over the last 50 years. By Clay Risen Dorothy ...

Mr. Stavans is the Lewis-Sebring professor at Amherst College and a consultant to the Oxford English Dictionary. He is the author of the forthcoming book “The People’s Tongue: Americans and the ...