Word Matters

While the famous Merriam-Webster.com online dictionary is constantly being updated, creating a new edition of our Collegiate Dictionary print book is a different matter. We'd been updating it regularly since its publication in 2003, but it wasn't until fall of 2025 that we released a brand-new edition, different from all those that preceded it. Here's the story of the making of Merriam-Webster's C...

Part three of a three-part interview with John Morse, former president and publisher of Merriam-Webster Hosted by Emily Brewster and Peter Sokolowski. Produced in collaboration with New England Public Media, with much gratitude to John Voci. Transcript available  here . See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-in...

Part two of a three-part interview with John Morse, former president and publisher of Merriam-Webster Hosted by Emily Brewster and Peter Sokolowski. Produced in collaboration with New England Public Media, with much gratitude to John Voci. Transcript available  here . See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info...

Part one of a three-part interview with John Morse, former president and publisher of Merriam-Webster Hosted by Emily Brewster and Peter Sokolowski. Produced in collaboration with New England Public Media, with much gratitude to John Voci. Transcript available here . See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

It’s our 100th episode, which seemed like a good occasion to answer a listener question of a more personal type: how did we—that is, we three editors—get here? Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski. Produced in collaboration with New England Public Media. Transcript available here . See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://a...

A listener questions a tautology in one of our definitions and starts us off on a discussion of all types of repetition and redundancy. Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski. Produced in collaboration with New England Public Media. Transcript available here . See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-...

Writing advice often includes hackneyed phrases we’re supposed to avoid. The phrases we're warned against today are different from the ones of yesteryear. We'll explore both. Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski. Produced in collaboration with New England Public Media. Transcript available here . See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at...

Whether you're hoping to improve your high school French or just order that croissant with more confidence, we have some tips for you. Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski. Produced in collaboration with New England Public Media. Transcript available here . See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-m...

A discussion of various kinds of slips of the tongue and errors of the ear. Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski. Produced in collaboration with New England Public Media. Transcript available here . See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

In the disconcerting event that your travels by air deliver you, but not what you've packed, to your destination, you may find yourself filing a lost luggage claim, or a lost baggage claim—it could be either. Instead of ruminating over the awful circumstances, we turn our attention to the words themselves; we also revisit the recombobulation area we first discussed in episode 86. Hosted by Emily B...

Sometimes a word, over time, will take on a meaning that doesn’t play very nicely with its original meaning, leaving a person who knows both meanings unsure what to do. Is the word still usable? Or is it … skunked?  Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski. Produced in collaboration with New England Public Media. Transcript available here . See Privacy Policy at https://art1...

We’ve discussed how words come to be entered in our dictionaries before, but today we’re going to talk about removing words from dictionaries. Which words get dropped? And why?  Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski. Produced in collaboration with New England Public Media. Transcript here . See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at h...

Some listeners want to know if working with words professionally makes a dictionary editor better, or worse, at Wordle, and another listener wants us to weigh in on the difference between 'nauseated' and 'nauseous'—which doesn’t turn our stomachs in the least. Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski. Produced in collaboration with New England Public Media. Transcript available h...

The earliest dictionaries were the fruit of one person’s labor, but the 1864 Webster's Unabridged changed all of that. Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski. Produced in collaboration with New England Public Media. Transcript available here . See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

Jacques Bailly has been the official pronouncer for Scripps National Spelling Bee since 2003—23 years after winning the bee himself. A professor in the Classics department at the University of Vermont, his language expertise is vast, and talking to him is a delight. Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski. Produced in collaboration with New England Public Media. Transcript avail...

An exploration of Thomas Nashe's use of animals as metaphors for those who imbibe heavily; And what *is* the plural of octopus ? Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski. Produced in collaboration with New England Public Media. Transcript available here . See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info...

An exploration of spellings—like 'ect.' for 'etc.'—that reflect alternative pronunciations, and the unexplainable favoritism that is shown to 'inexplicable.' Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski. Produced in collaboration with New England Public Media. Transcript available here . See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.co...

A visit to the mailbag provides us with a sartorial use of ‘hipster,’ some schooling on 19th century locomotive technology, and a question about sneaking words into dictionaries. Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski. Produced in collaboration with New England Public Media. Transcript available here . See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notic...

We all know how to find opposites by removing prefixes: 'unhappy' becomes 'happy'; 'disagree' becomes 'agree.' Easy peasy. But some words resist prefix removal—or, at least they try.  Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski. Produced in collaboration with New England Public Media. Transcript available here . See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Pri...

George Orwell published his famous essay "Politics and the English Language" in 1946, and we mostly wish he hadn't. Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski. Produced in collaboration with New England Public Media. Transcript available  here . See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

English borrowed lots of words from French. And it liked some of those words so much it borrowed them twice.  Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski. Produced in collaboration with New England Public Media. Transcript available  here . See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

If brevity is the soul of wit, are abbreviations the language's best jokes? Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski. Produced in collaboration with New England Public Media. Transcript available  here . See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

Whistleblowers didn't always tell secrets and hipsters weren't always hip. This episode explains how 'whistleblower' and 'hipster' came to have their current meanings. Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski. Produced in collaboration with New England Public Media. Transcript available here . See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https:...

First, we'll look at how 'at large' came to be applied to editors, criminals, and sometimes the world itself. Then, we'll trace the word 'large' itself. It's kind of a big deal. Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski. Produced in collaboration with New England Public Media. Transcript available here . See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice...

This week's episode is all about the small details that make up the dictionary. How do we decide the guide words that appear at the tops of pages? What are those dots that break up a headword at a dictionary entry? (Hint: they have nothing to do with pronunciation.) Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski. Produced in collaboration with New England Public Media. Transcript avail...