Tag: dictionary

Etymology is the origin of a word and the study of how its use and meaning have changed over time. For instance, some words with a Latin origin have variations to their plurals. Instead of adding -s, the following four words change form. Some of these uses have faded out almost completely during this century,…

When used to refer to language and dictionaries, corpus (“corpus linguistics”) is an extensive collection of written or audio samples (“corpora”) used in the study of language. Early attempts to study language in this way were based on cultural and religious texts, such as Sanskrit, Hebrew and Arabic writings. Once gathered by hand, these collections…

Any well-used language evolves; words and idioms fade in and out of the English tongue as the personality of American culture changes. Dictionary companies examine what people are saying and which words they use to say it, and several words each year are selected for inclusion into the new dictionaries. In this way, words become…