Merriam-Webster’s dictionary has been flirting with the thin line between cheekily relevant and irritatingly attention seeking lately. The evolving compendium of the English language has garnered headlines recently with its social media swipes at the Trump administration. And now, the dictionary is trolling Apple fans…
Merriam Webster has updated its newest edition with 150 new words. A lot of the terms — social networking, tweeps, hashtag, and catfish (in the identity sense, not in the goes-well-with-okra sense) — come from social media. But there are also plenty of other words including Yooper, freegan, fracking and more.
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 dictionaries get made.
As far as humans are concerned, the world didn't exist until, well, they existed. That means anything that happened before you were born is mere fairy tales and make believe conversation. But what about those words that filled those tales and conversations? When did they start existing? When were those words born?…
Time to fire up Instagram and party like it's, um, 2013, because 'selfie' has been named the Oxford Dictionaries word of the year.
Because language doesn't really matter anymore to the Internet, words that people use online all the time even though people are often too embarrassed to say it in real life are now a part of the dictionary. The Oxford Dictionaries Online is adding these wonky words to its dictionary: twerk, phablet, derp, selfie,…
Grammar loving folks who love to point out where commas should be inserted instead of periods and how semi-colons are both simultaneously underused and overused, should pick up their red pens, furrowed brows and pitchforks at the fact that the definition of literally is literally no longer the literal definition of…
Merriam-Webster decided to flex its mastery and importance over the English language and name the top 10 words of the year for 2012. Unsurprisingly, a lot of them are politics related (we had an election this year, didn't ya know?) but one tech word was able to sneak its way into the top 10: meme.
Dictionaries exist in between a rock and a hard place: jump on new words too late and they look like a dinosaur, add in words too early and they're made into a mockery. Words are hard, yes, but some words don't exactly need defining like some of these just added to the Oxford Dictionaries Online.
You can chuck that Merriam-Webster dictionary that's sitting on your desk out the window (along with all your magazines). It's been iPad-ized and it looks beautiful. Also, it's free.
Next time you play Scrabble, grab the official Collins Dictionary so you can outmaneuver your friends with words like "webzine", "darknet" and "grrl". Be prepared, though, as those non-techies across from you may win with the dreaded "Facebook".
If you are using an iOS device, open any text window and write Ballmer. Unless you have someone named Ballmer in your address book, you are just going to get this from the autocorrection engine: Baloney.
A jury foreman in a manslaughter murder case in Florida has caused a mistrial with his iPhone. How? He looked up the word "prudence" during deliberations. On Encarta.
"Falling away by tens per cent a year," the print dictionary market "is just disappearing." That's what Oxford University Press' CEO Nigel Portwood says. And that's exactly why the third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary may be online only.
Unichal's Dixau DX3 digital dictionary saves you all that trouble of typing out words you don't understand. Instead, it takes a picture of the offending verbiage with a pop-up digital camera and automatically translates it. How efficacious!
This was kind of inevitable. Google Dictionary, I mean. It's a straight-up dictionary, yeah, but it has a few pretty Google-y features, like the ability to star words, if you're real forgetful, and you can search for words in multiple languages. It's also a fairly stripped interface, unlike a lot of dictionary sites,…
The New Oxford American Dictionary declared "Unfriend" the word of the year. It beat out hashtag, netbook and sexting, among other nominated words. Oxford defines the verb as: "To remove someone as a 'friend' on a social networking site such as Facebook." I think they should include offline usage, too, like when you…
The iPhone dictionary famously doesn't take kindly to cussing, but here's a notable exception. This autocorrection takes an insult from the anatomical to the excellently profane, helpfully providing an even more vulgar word in case you need it. [Twitter]
The Sign Language Translator's name may be a tad misleading (it doesn't actually translate anything), but as a pocket ASL video dictionary, it's a neat enough idea.
Yes, it's official: you now can be a fanboy by the power of Grayskull and the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, which says the word is now part of the English language. They arrive a little late, because the Oxford American Dictionary in Apple's Mac OS X Leopard running on my Apple iMac 24" shows it, and so does…
