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A lot of people use the dictionary to find out how to spell words.

The trouble with the dictionary is that you have to know how a word is spelled before you can look it up to see how it is spelled.

Spellings are made by people. Dictionaries - eventually - reflect popular choices.

The dictionary is like a time capsule of all of human thinking ever since words began to be written down. And exploring where words have come from can increase your understanding of the words themselves and expand your understanding of how to use the words, and all of this change happens in your thinking when you read the words.

When I need to know the meaning of a word, I look it up in a dictionary.

At a certain point, what people mean when they use a word becomes its meaning.

You see failed vocabulary in the adult world so often, and it's often because once you reach a certain age you're kind of embarrassed to go look up a word if you don't know what it means.

If you have a big enough dictionary, just about everything is a word.

I'm very sensitive to the English language. I studied the dictionary obsessively when I was a kid and collect old dictionaries. Words, I think, are very powerful and they convey an intention.

When a kid can understand that a word can mean two things, there's some real thinking going on. They have a vested interest in finding out what a word means, because it's the punch line to a joke.