Best Word Lists

Designed to provide the student with an excellent command of basic Russian (the equivalent of A’ level standard) the book features thirty lessons punctuated by revision exercises to ensure you have fully understood what you have learned.

From Jim Carrey to Sister Carrie, Homer Simpson to Homer’s Iliad, the wide-ranging entries include 500,000+ synonyms, 3,000+ literary works, 3,000+ films, 20,000+ famous people from all fields, and more than 50,000 fill-in-the-blank clues so popular in today’s crosswords. “The largest, most up-to-date, and most useful crossword dictionary available.” (from the Introduction by Will Shortz, New York Times Crossword Editor). A must for the crossword aficionado.” (Rich Norris, Los Angeles Times crossword editor). “...this remarkable book is destined to be not just another crossword dictionary, but the crossword dictionary.” (Wayne Robert Williams, Chicago Tribune crossword editor).

Fans of the hit HBO series Game of Thrones can now learn the Dothraki language. He's been creating languages since 2000, and working on the HBO original series Game of Thrones since 2009. In 2007, he helped to found the Language Creation Society, of which David has remained a proud member.

Filled with fun facts—for example, the first documented usage of “OMG” was in a letter to Winston Churchill—and Stamper’s own stories from the linguistic front lines (including how she became America’s foremost “irregardless” apologist, despite loathing the word), Word by Word is an endlessly entertaining look at the wonderful complexities and eccentricities of the English language. An Amazon Best Book of March 2017: “We think of English as a fortress to be defended, but a better analogy is to think of English as a child,” writes Kory Stamper in her witty and surprising new book, Word by Word . And that’s why it flourishes.” Word by Word is part memoir, part history of dictionaries – in particular, those published by Stamper’s employer, Merriam Webster. The surprises come when she describes the difficulties of defining seemingly simple words like “nude” and “marriage.” Stamper and her fellow lexicographers work mostly in silence, but they can’t escape being drawn into our era’s vociferous political discourse. Along the way, there’s much pleasure to be had in Stamper’s down-to-earth, frequently ribald narrative style, which keeps Word by Word from feeling overly intellectual or highfalutin’. She has that special “feeling for language” she calls sprachgefühl: “the odd buzzing in your brain that tells you that ‘planting the lettuce’ and ‘planting misinformation’ are different uses of ‘plant.’” “Word by Word” offers laymen a glimpse into a crack lexicographer’s mind, and it turns out to be – definitively – a very entertaining place indeed. Stamper leads us through her own lexicographical bildungsroman, exploring how she fell in love with words and showing us how the dictionary works, and how it interacts with the world that it strives to reflect.” —Adrienne Raphel, The New Yorker “As a writer, Stamper can do anything with words. You will never take a dictionary entry for granted again.” —Mary Norris, best-selling author of Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen “A fascinating, even enthralling, examination of the way words actually work in our language, warts and all.” — The A.V. Stamper displays a contagious enthusiasm for words and a considerable talent for putting them together.” — The New Yorker “ Word by Word cherishes the dexterity involved in making dictionaries, and . Part of its quirky charm is a delight in the idiosyncrasies of others—not least Merriam-Webster’s many correspondents.” — The Wall Street Journal “Packed with the kind of word-lore that keeps readers and writers up late at night: Where do our words come from? An exuberant mash note to language.” — The Times Literary Supplement “[ Word by Word ] mixes memoiristic meditations on the lexicographic life along with a detailed description of the brain-twisting work of writing dictionaries.” — The New York Times “Anyone who loves words or has opinions about them will have fun in this sandbox of a book.” — The Washington Times “A delectable feast. [Stamper] declaims elegantly on the beauty and necessity of dialect, how to evaluate emerging words, and many other topics. [Stamper] presents passionate, precise, good-humored (and bad-humored) descriptions of every stage of the process that goes into making an entry.” — The Chronicle of Higher Education “[ Word by Word ] entertains as much as it instructs.” —Baltimore Sun “A captivating book.” — Lincoln Journal Star “Idiosyncratic and engaging.” — The Gazette (Cedar Rapids, IA). “A smart, sparkling and often hilarious valentine to the content and keepers of dictionaries. A paean to the craft of lexicography.’” — Shelf Awareness “A funny inside look at how new words make their way into dictionaries, an irreverent take on the history of English itself, and a memoir of [Stamper’s] own journey.” — Daily Hampshire Gazette “[A] marvelous insight into the messy world behind the tidy definitions on the page. It is perhaps unsurprising, given her line of work, that Stamper employs words with delightful precision in her writing.” — Booklist.

Merriam-Webster's Everyday Language Reference Set contains:A newly updated Merriam-Webster Dictionary with new words added from a variety of fields, 75,000 updated definitions with 8,000 usage examples to aid understanding. The company publishes a diverse array of print and electronic products, including Merriam-Webster's Collegiate® Dictionary, Eleventh Edition America's best-selling desk dictionary and Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged.