From the first English dictionary in 1604 to today’s online platforms, dictionaries have shifted from telling us how to speak to reflecting how we actually do. They now record slang, cultural shifts, ...

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

Tottenham Hotspur’s protests about the OED’s definition of the Y-word may be understandable, but are misplaced Protests against dictionaries are nothing new. In the 1960s, distaste for the treatment ...

To compile a dictionary of nearly every word in the English language was an endeavor typical of Victorian times, complete with white-bearded gentlemen, utter confidence and an endearingly plodding ...

The great lexicographers understood that a worthy dictionary was descriptive, not prescriptive. It would simply record what we’ve already agreed upon socially You can save this article by registering ...

"Just how far removed we had already become from Britain even in the nineteenth century was not well understood in the mother country," begins an essay in the first pages of the Canadian Oxford ...

Generations ago, most Canadian Inuit lived in small seasonal camps but, over the past 60 years, Inuit have settled into permanent towns, where traditional dialects intermingled and sometimes developed ...

A friend in need is a friend indeed,” says a Latin proverb and according to me it aptly defines ‘dictionary’. There are many ways through which a person can find out more about words, but the best one ...

The Aboriginal language Miriwoong is one of the oldest languages on Earth, but fewer than 10 people speak it fluently. Miriwoong is considered critically endangered — on the brink of completely ...

The first dictionaries of the country's myriad ethnic languages without native written forms are rolling off the presses. As the foundations of the Middle Kingdom's Tower of Babel weaken, the ...