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What Is Lexicography?

Lexicography is the craft and science of making dictionaries. That might sound straightforward — you collect words, write definitions, put them in alphabetical order, done. But anyone who’s actually attempted it knows better. Samuel Johnson, who compiled the first major English dictionary in 1755, described the lexicographer as “a harmless drudge.” Seven decades later, Noah Webster spent 26 years on his American dictionary. The Oxford English Dictionary took 70 years for its first complete edition.

Making a dictionary is a massive, painstaking, endlessly debatable undertaking. And it’s far more interesting than most people realize.

What Lexicographers Actually Do

A lexicographer’s job breaks down into several stages:

Collecting evidence. Before you can define a word, you need to see how people actually use it. Modern lexicographers maintain enormous databases of citations — sentences drawn from books, newspapers, websites, transcripts, and social media. Merriam-Webster monitors roughly 100 million words of text per month. The Oxford English Dictionary’s citation database contains over 3.5 million quotations.

Writing definitions. This is harder than it looks. A definition needs to be precise, concise, and understandable to someone who doesn’t already know the word. It shouldn’t be circular (defining “big” as “large” and “large” as “big”). It should cover the word’s actual range of meaning without being so broad it could apply to anything. Good definition writing is a genuine skill that takes years to develop.

Ordering senses. Many words have multiple meanings. “Run” has over 600 distinct uses in the Oxford English Dictionary. Lexicographers must decide how to organize these senses — historically (oldest meaning first) or by frequency (most common meaning first). Different dictionaries make different choices.

Adding supplementary information. Pronunciation, etymology, usage notes, example sentences, grammatical labels (noun, verb, adjective), register labels (formal, informal, slang, archaic) — all of this surrounds the definition and helps the reader understand not just what a word means but how to use it.

A Condensed History

The idea of listing words with explanations is ancient. Sumerian-Akkadian word lists from around 2300 BCE are among the earliest known examples. Ancient Chinese, Greek, and Sanskrit scholars all created glossaries and word lists.

But the modern dictionary — thorough, alphabetically arranged, with detailed definitions and citations — is a relatively recent invention. Robert Cawdrey’s A Table Alphabeticall (1604) is usually cited as the first English dictionary, though it contained only about 2,500 “hard words” borrowed from other languages.

Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language (1755) changed everything. Johnson worked with six assistants for nine years to produce a two-volume work containing about 42,773 entries, each illustrated with literary quotations. It remained the standard English dictionary for 173 years.

Noah Webster’s An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828) established American English as distinct from British English, standardizing American spellings like “color” (not “colour”) and “center” (not “centre”).

The Oxford English Dictionary, begun in 1857 and not completed until 1928, attempted something unprecedented: documenting every word in the English language from 1150 onward, with dated quotations showing each word’s historical development. It’s still being revised — continuously, now — and remains the most ambitious lexicographic project in history.

The Prescriptive vs. Descriptive Debate

This is the argument that never dies. Should a dictionary tell you how language ought to be used, or should it describe how language is used?

Prescriptivists want dictionaries to uphold standards. If people misuse “literally” to mean “figuratively,” the dictionary shouldn’t validate that. If “irregardless” isn’t a proper word, don’t include it.

Descriptivists — and this includes most professional lexicographers today — argue that a dictionary’s job is to document language as it actually exists. If millions of people use “literally” for emphasis, that’s a real meaning that deserves an entry. Excluding it doesn’t make people stop using it; it just makes the dictionary incomplete.

The distinction matters more than you’d think. It shapes what gets included, how definitions are worded, and what usage labels are applied. It also generates a remarkable amount of public outrage whenever a dictionary adds a word or meaning that people find objectionable.

Digital Lexicography

The internet didn’t just change how dictionaries are distributed — it changed how they’re made. Print dictionaries had to make brutal choices about what to include, constrained by physical page limits. A digital dictionary has effectively infinite space.

Corpus linguistics — using computer analysis of massive text databases — has transformed evidence gathering. Lexicographers can now track word frequency, collocations (which words appear together), and usage patterns across billions of words of text. This makes definitions more accurate and more responsive to how language actually behaves.

Online dictionaries also update continuously. Merriam-Webster adds new words several times per year. The OED publishes quarterly updates. Print editions are essentially snapshots; online dictionaries are living documents.

Crowdsourced projects like Wiktionary have democratized lexicography further, though professional lexicographers note — correctly — that volunteer-written definitions vary wildly in quality.

Why It Matters

You might not think about dictionaries often. But they shape how we understand language, settle arguments, adjudicate legal disputes (courts cite dictionary definitions regularly), and teach literacy. A good dictionary is one of the most useful reference tools ever created.

And the work of making one — deciding what counts as a word, how to explain it, what examples to include — requires a combination of linguistic expertise, clear writing ability, and deep patience that honestly deserves more recognition than it gets.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does a word get into the dictionary?

Lexicographers track new words through citation databases — large collections of published and spoken examples. When a word shows sustained, widespread use across multiple sources over a period of time (usually years), it becomes a candidate for inclusion. A single viral moment isn't enough; the word needs staying power.

What is the difference between prescriptive and descriptive lexicography?

Prescriptive dictionaries tell you how words should be used. Descriptive dictionaries document how words are actually used. Most modern English dictionaries are descriptive — they record language as it exists, including informal and contested usages, rather than trying to enforce rules.

How many words are in the English language?

It depends on how you count. The Oxford English Dictionary contains over 600,000 entries. Webster's Third New International has about 470,000. But if you include technical jargon, regional dialects, and slang, estimates range from 1 million to over 1.5 million distinct English words.

Further Reading

• Oxford English Dictionary
• Merriam-Webster: How a Dictionary Is Made
• Dictionary Society of North America