Robert Charles Hope, inventor of the crank used to adjust the tension on a tennis net, is among thousands of readers who in the late 19th century responded to a call from the Oxford English Dictionary to send in citations for notable words they...
The first known citation for the word dustbin is credited to Charles Dickens. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Dustbin and Dickens” Here’s another term that was either coined or popularized by Charles Dickens. It...
Plenty of people write to dictionary editors asking for words to be added. It almost never works. But what if politicians make a special request? To urge adoption of the term upstander, as in “the opposite of bystander,” to honor those...