Who decides what’s in the dictionary?
Cool bit of history about the power the dictionary has exerted over the history of language, specifically the English language, in the last few hundred years, from Ilan Stavan and TED-Ed.
While the concept of a dictionary dates back to ancient civilizations, the first English dictionary wasn’t published until 1604. In the centuries that followed, many more dictionaries were written by individual authors who chose what to include or exclude, with most quickly becoming outdated. One 19th century lexicon had a different fate. Ilan Stavans digs into the history of Webster’s Dictionary.
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