Evocative definitions of colors in Webster's Third New International Dictionary and how they got there. [more inside]
posted by Cash4Lead on Aug 17, 2012 - 13 comments

Merriam-Webster's Ask the Editors blog is the centerpiece of the Merriam-Webster's Learner's Dictionary site. It is an excellent source of sensible advice about English language and usage. Editor-at-large Peter Sokolowski also has a Twitter feed where he highlights various interesting things about words. Finally, Merriam-Webster has started producing Ask the Editor videos, four so far, where they've tackled the subjects of i before e, classical roots, affect vs. effect and how news stories affect what words people look up online, in this case focusing on the effect of the coverage of Michael Jackson's death. Incidentally, Merriam-Webster have released their top ten words of 2009 list, which is based on what words people looked up.
posted by Kattullus on Nov 20, 2009 - 15 comments

McDonalds CEO Puts McJob in Mainstream. By taking Merriam-Webster to task for including McJob ("low paying and dead-end work") in its latest Collegiate Dictionary, McDonald's CEO Jim Cantalupo has ensured that yet another disparaging fast-food web-fed meme joins the venerable "You want fries with that?" If this had been Fox, I would have said it was intentional.
posted by mischief on Nov 8, 2003 - 39 comments

M-W redesigns but doesn't actually improve the site. One curious (read: irritating) thing -- if you are currently looking at a definition (with the definition tab highlighted) and you click on the thesaurus tab, it doesn't automagically look up the same word in the thesaurus. It just gives a new search box. Dumb.
posted by sylloge on Apr 16, 2000 - 4 comments