Not long after my arrival, though, everything changed. Pageviews were declining for Merriam-Webster.com, the company’s free, ad-driven revenue engine: Tweaks to Google’s algorithms had punished ...

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 ...

After graduate school, I treated myself to a full set — that's 20 very large and heavy volumes — of the Oxford English Dictionary for my home office. It was a very on-brand purchase for me, and also a ...