In Stefan Fatsis’s capacious, and at times score-settling, personal history of the reference book, he reveals what the ...

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, ...

“Slop,” a term used to describe low-quality digital content, has been named word of the year by the Merriam-Webster dictionary. The dictionary defines slop as “digital content of low quality that is ...

AI’s impact on our social media feeds has not gone unnoticed by one of America’s top dictionaries. Amidst the onslaught of content that has swept the web over the past 12 months, Merriam-Webster ...

Like most tools, generative AI models can be misused. And when the misuse gets bad enough that a major dictionary notices, you know it has become a cultural phenomenon. On Sunday, Merriam-Webster ...

Creepy, zany and demonstrably fake content is often called "slop." The word's proliferation online, in part thanks to the widespread availability of generative artificial intelligence, landed it the ...

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 ...

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." It's a ...

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 ...

Merriam-Webster decided to poke fun at AI hype with a new video this week announcing its latest edition. The dictionary’s account posted a slick, 35-second announcement that initially appeared to be ...

The dictionary definition of the word “ate” is a verb that could either mean the past tense of “eat” or what Merriam-Webster just pulled in a new ad. The reference book publishing company, which is ...