A Book That Looks Neutral but Never Has Been
A dictionary can seem like the most objective book in the room. It sits on a shelf, heavy with authority, promising to tell us what words “really” mean. When a dispute breaks out over a term—whether in politics, culture, law, or everyday conversation—someone often reaches for the dictionary as if it were a referee with no stake in the game.
But dictionaries have never simply recorded language from a distance. They have always reflected decisions: which words deserve inclusion, whose speech counts as standard, which meanings are respectable, and which are marked as slang, vulgar, obsolete, or incorrect. Behind every definition is a history of power.
The dictionary became a battleground because language itself is a battleground. Words shape identity, law, education, social status, and political possibility. To define a word is not just to explain it. It is to influence how people think, argue, and belong.
Before Dictionaries, There Were Authorities
Long before modern dictionaries, societies relied on teachers, religious leaders, scribes, and scholars to explain the meaning of difficult words. In ancient and medieval worlds, glossaries helped readers understand sacred texts, legal documents, and classical literature. These early word lists were practical tools, but they also reinforced hierarchy.
The people who had access to literacy controlled interpretation. A monk explaining Latin, a scholar commenting on Greek, or a court official clarifying legal vocabulary did more than translate. They preserved a system in which knowledge belonged to institutions.
In English, early glossaries often explained Latin or French terms for readers who were not part of elite educational circles. This mattered because English itself had long been seen as less prestigious than Latin or French. After the Norman Conquest of 1066, French dominated law and aristocratic life in England, while Latin remained the language of the church and scholarship. English survived in common use, but it lacked the institutional prestige of its rivals.
When English dictionaries began to emerge, they were not only linguistic tools. They were part of a broader argument that English was worthy of study, refinement, and authority.
The Rise of the “Hard Words” Dictionary
The first English dictionaries were not designed to define every common word. Instead, they focused on “hard words”—terms borrowed from Latin, Greek, French, and other languages that educated readers might encounter but not understand.
Robert Cawdrey’s A Table Alphabeticall, published in 1604, is often considered the first monolingual English dictionary. Its purpose was not to document everyday English in all its variety. It aimed to help “ladies, gentlewomen, or any other unskilful persons” understand difficult terms. Even in that phrasing, we can hear the assumptions of the time: dictionaries were instruments of education, but also of social correction.
These early dictionaries treated language as something that needed to be polished. The growing English middle class wanted access to the vocabulary of learning and status. To know the right words was to move upward. To misuse them was to reveal one’s place.
In this period, the dictionary was already becoming a gatekeeping device. It did not merely answer, “What does this word mean?” It suggested, “This is the kind of language educated people should know.”
Samuel Johnson and the Dream of Fixing English
No figure looms larger in the history of English dictionaries than Samuel Johnson. His Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1755, was a monumental achievement. Johnson defined more than 40,000 words and illustrated them with quotations from major writers such as Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, and Pope.
Johnson’s dictionary was admired for its wit, scholarship, and literary richness. But it also reflected a powerful belief of the eighteenth century: that language should be stabilized. Many writers feared that English was becoming unruly, corrupted by fashion, foreign influence, and careless use. Some wanted an official academy, like the Académie Française in France, to regulate English.
Johnson initially shared the desire to “fix” the language. Yet as he worked, he came to understand that language could not truly be frozen. Words changed because people changed. Usage shifted across regions, classes, and generations. His famous preface acknowledges the impossibility of permanently preserving a living language.
Still, Johnson made choices that carried cultural weight. His examples came from literary authorities, not ordinary speech. His judgments were sometimes moral, political, or personal. His definition of “oats” as “a grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people” is famously funny, but it also reveals how national prejudice could enter the supposedly neutral space of definition.
Johnson did not just describe English. He helped create the idea of “proper” English as something tied to literature, education, and elite taste.
Webster and the Making of American English
Across the Atlantic, Noah Webster saw dictionaries as tools of nation-building. After the American Revolution, the United States needed more than political independence. It needed cultural independence. Webster believed American English should break away from British standards and reflect the character of the new republic.
His dictionaries and spelling books promoted simplified spellings such as “color” instead of “colour,” “center” instead of “centre,” and “defense” instead of “defence.” These were not random preferences. They were declarations of identity.
Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1828, sought to define an American linguistic standard. In doing so, it helped unify a geographically large and socially diverse country. But like Johnson, Webster also carried assumptions about religion, morality, and proper usage. His definitions often reflected his conservative worldview.
The American dictionary became an instrument of education, citizenship, and assimilation. Immigrants, schoolchildren, and regional speakers were taught that certain forms were correct and others were not. The dictionary helped create a shared national language, but it also pressured people to abandon dialects, accents, and local expressions that did not fit the standard.
The Oxford English Dictionary and the Power of Evidence
The Oxford English Dictionary changed the game by attempting to document the history of every word in English through evidence. Its editors gathered quotations from books, newspapers, letters, and manuscripts to trace how meanings evolved over time.
This was a more descriptive approach. Rather than simply declaring what a word should mean, the OED showed how people had actually used it. Thousands of volunteer readers contributed quotations, making the project unusually collaborative for its era.
Yet even this great historical dictionary was shaped by exclusion. The sources most likely to be preserved and cited were written by literate, published, often male and elite authors. Spoken language, working-class slang, colonial Englishes, and the vocabularies of marginalized communities were harder to capture.
The OED expanded the idea of what a dictionary could be, but it did not escape the politics of evidence. If a word was widely spoken but rarely printed, it could remain invisible. If a community lacked access to publishing, its language might be treated as marginal or late, even when it had a long history.
Slang, Taboo, and the Fight for Legitimacy
One of the fiercest dictionary battles has always concerned slang and taboo language. Should dictionaries include swear words? Racial slurs? Sexual terms? Street slang? Internet expressions? For centuries, many editors avoided or sanitized such words, fearing that inclusion would imply approval.
But exclusion creates its own problems. If dictionaries omit offensive or controversial words, readers lose access to information about how those words function, where they came from, and why they wound. A dictionary that refuses to define taboo terms may appear polite, but it also leaves power unexamined.
The inclusion of slang has often been interpreted as cultural decline. Critics complain that dictionaries are “letting in” bad language, as if lexicographers were border guards. But modern dictionary editors usually argue that inclusion is not endorsement. A word enters a dictionary because evidence shows people use it.
This principle became especially important as youth culture, Black English, queer slang, immigrant communities, and online subcultures reshaped public language. Words that once circulated within specific communities now move rapidly into mainstream awareness. The question is no longer whether dictionaries can keep slang out. It is whether they can explain it responsibly.
Dictionaries in the Age of Identity and Politics
Today, definitions are flashpoints in cultural conflict. Words such as “racism,” “gender,” “woman,” “marriage,” “woke,” “terrorism,” “antisemitism,” and “freedom” are not merely linguistic entries. They are political arenas.
When Merriam-Webster updates a definition, headlines often follow. Sometimes the change reflects long-term usage evidence. Other times, public debate draws attention to gaps in older definitions. For example, activists have challenged dictionaries to define racism not only as individual prejudice but also as systemic power. Such debates reveal that definitions can shape public understanding of injustice.
This does not mean dictionaries should simply bend to pressure. But it does mean lexicographers must confront the fact that words do social work. A narrow definition can erase lived experience. A broad one can provoke accusations of ideology. Either way, neutrality is difficult because language is embedded in conflict.
Online dictionaries have made these battles more visible. Definitions can be updated quickly, criticized instantly, and shared widely. What once happened slowly in editorial offices now unfolds in public.
Who Gets to Define the Future?
The history of dictionaries is often told as a story of great editors and monumental books. But the deeper story is about authority. Priests, scholars, gentlemen, nationalists, publishers, academics, activists, and online communities have all fought, in different ways, to define words.
Modern lexicographers emphasize that they follow usage rather than dictate it. In one sense, this democratizes the dictionary: the real authors of language are its speakers and writers. But not all speakers are heard equally. Some communities are documented more thoroughly. Some forms of speech are dismissed as improper. Some words are noticed only after they have been borrowed, mocked, or commercialized by outsiders.
The dictionary is no longer a sealed temple of authority, if it ever was. It is a living record of struggle: between prescription and description, elite and popular speech, tradition and change, harm and recognition.
To ask “What does this word mean?” is also to ask “Who has had the power to say so?” The answer has changed over centuries, and it is still changing now. Dictionaries may look calm on the page, but their definitions carry the noise of history—argument, exclusion, invention, resistance, and the endless human effort to make meaning together.