Most people think of a dictionary as a dusty, stone tablet of laws. You open it up to settle a Scrabble dispute or to prove your cousin is using "irregardless" wrong. But honestly? Dictionaries are more like a messy, living diary of how we talk. They aren't the police. They're historians.
In her book Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries, Kory Stamper pulls back the curtain on the cubicles at Merriam-Webster. It’s not a group of stuffy professors in tweed jackets deciding which words are "pure" enough for the English language. Instead, it’s a bunch of people sitting in silence, surrounded by slips of paper, obsessing over whether a "brunch" is a late breakfast or an early lunch.
The reality of lexicography is far weirder than the average person realizes. It’s a job that requires a bizarre mix of extreme patience, a massive vocabulary, and the ability to ignore your own personal feelings about words like "moist" or "impactful."
The Myth of the Language Police
There is this massive misconception that dictionary editors are the supreme court of language. People write angry letters to Merriam-Webster or Oxford because a "slang" word like selfie or sus got added. They feel like the language is being degraded.
But here’s the thing: Dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive.
If enough people use a word to mean a specific thing, the dictionary has to include it. That is the fundamental rule of the secret life of dictionaries. Lexicographers don't care if you think a word is "fake." If it’s being used in newspapers, books, and casual conversation for years, it’s real. Period.
Stamper describes this process as a kind of scientific observation. You aren't deciding what should be; you're documenting what is. When the word "irregardless" was added, people lost their minds. But the word has been in documented use since the 1700s. To a lexicographer, ignoring a word that has been used for 300 years just because it’s redundant would be like a biologist ignoring a specific type of fungus because they think it’s ugly. It exists. It has to be in the book.
How a Word Actually Gets In
It isn't a fast process. It's agonizingly slow.
To get into a major dictionary, a word has to meet three main criteria: widespread use, sustained use, and meaningful use. This is where the "secret life" part gets intense. Lexicographers spend their entire day reading. They read everything. High-brow literary journals, technical manuals, the back of cereal boxes, and sports columns.
They are looking for "citations."
When an editor finds a word being used in the wild, they mark it. They note the context. They note who is saying it. This citation goes into a massive database. Years later, another editor might look at that word and see if it’s still around. If a word pops up in 2022 but disappears by 2024, it’s a fad. It doesn't get a seat at the table.
Take the word "surf." In the 1960s, it meant riding a wave. In the 1990s, it suddenly meant looking at things on the internet. Lexicographers had to track that shift in real-time. They had to decide: is "surfing the web" a metaphor that will die, or is it a new permanent definition? They waited. They watched. Eventually, the evidence was overwhelming.
The "Take" Problem and the Definition Nightmare
You’d think defining "nuclear physics" would be the hardest part of the job. It’s not. The hardest words to define are the ones we use every single day.
Words like run, set, or take.
In Word by Word, Stamper mentions that the definition for the word "take" is one of the longest in the Merriam-Webster dictionary. Why? Because it means everything and nothing. You take a bus. You take a pill. You take a liking to someone. You take a photo. You take a break.
Each one of those uses is slightly different. An editor has to sit there and tease out the tiny, microscopic differences between "taking a seat" and "taking a nap." It can take months—literally months—to write a single entry for a common verb. It’s a level of mental focus that would make most people’s brains melt.
There is also the "neutrality" problem. Lexicographers have to be objective. This gets incredibly difficult when defining words related to politics, religion, or identity. If they use a word that is too "hot," they get accused of bias. If they use a word that is too "cold," they get accused of being out of touch. They are constantly walking a tightrope between being accurate to how people speak and not being inflammatory.
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The Silence of the Office
One of the most surprising details about the secret life of dictionaries is the physical environment. Most offices are loud. People chat. Phones ring.
Not at Merriam-Webster.
The editorial floor is famously silent. Lexicography requires a state of "deep work" that is almost monastic. You are trying to hold 50 different nuances of a word in your head at once. One interruption can shatter that mental structure. Editors often communicate via internal notes or email, even if they sit three feet away from each other.
It’s a solitary life, yet it’s entirely focused on the most social thing humans do: communicate.
Why Dictionaries Still Matter in the Age of Google
You might wonder why we even need these people anymore. Can't AI just scrape the internet and define words?
Not really. Not yet.
AI is great at spotting patterns, but it’s terrible at understanding human intent. An AI might see a word used sarcastically and think that’s the literal definition. Lexicographers provide the "why" and the "how." They understand that language is rooted in culture, history, and emotion.
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When you look at a dictionary entry, you aren't just looking at a definition. You're looking at the result of hundreds of hours of human labor. You're looking at a consensus on how we, as a species, have decided to represent an idea with a series of sounds or letters.
The dictionary is a mirror. If you don't like what you see in it—if you don't like that "literally" now also means "figuratively"—don't blame the mirror. Blame the people who are using the word that way. The dictionary is just telling you the truth about how we talk when we think nobody is listening.
How to Use a Dictionary Like a Pro
If you want to actually benefit from the secret life of dictionaries, you have to stop using them just for spelling.
- Check the etymology. Knowing that "clue" originally meant a ball of thread (which helped you find your way out of a maze) changes how you see the word.
- Look at the dates. Most modern dictionaries will tell you when a word first appeared in print. It’s a great way to see if you’re using an anachronism.
- Read the example sentences. These are often written by editors to show the exact "flavor" of a word. They are tiny pieces of micro-fiction.
- Don't ignore the "obsolete" tags. Sometimes the oldest version of a word is the most poetic.
The next time you open an app or a heavy book to look up a word, remember the editors. Remember the silence of the office. Remember the thousands of slips of paper. You aren't just looking at a word; you're looking at a tiny piece of the human experience that someone spent weeks trying to capture just right.
Language is a wild, untamable beast. Lexicographers are the ones brave enough to try and map its movements, one word at a time. It’s a thankless, quiet, and deeply essential job that keeps our communication from falling into total chaos.
Actionable Insight: Start your own citation habit. If you hear a word used in a way that feels new or strange, don't dismiss it as "wrong." Write it down. Look it up. See if you can find three other people using it that way. You’ll start to see the language changing in real-time, and you'll realize that the secret life of dictionaries isn't just happening in an office in Massachusetts—it's happening every time you open your mouth.