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Articles on Dictionaries

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Study groups and quizzes can help, but one studying technique stands out above the rest. Hill Street Studios / Getty Images

What it takes to become a spelling bee champ

The road to becoming a champion speller is made easier with support from family and friends, but ultimately it depends on an individual student’s commitment to learning, a scholar writes.
Quotation slips for the first Oxford English Dictionary. Owen McKnight/Flickr

Book review: The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams

A new book, which weaves fiction into the origin story of the Oxford English Dictionary, was declared a hit even before its release. Readers will judge whether it lives up to the hype.
The American Dialect Society chose ‘they’ as its ‘Word of the Decade.’ abstract_art7/Shutterstock.com

For linguists, it was the decade of the pronoun

Pronouns rarely, if ever, change. Then along came the gender nonbinary ‘they,’ which was just anointed ‘word of the decade.’
Go ahead, just let off some steam. 'Swearing' via www.shutterstock.com

Do we swear too much?

With the taboo on swearing loosening over the past few decades, will profanity lose its effectiveness in spoken language?

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