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The ancient Greeks were some of the earliest makers of dictionaries; they used them mainly to catalog obsolete terms from their rich literary past. To create a word for writers of dictionaries, the Greeks sensibly attached the suffix -graphos, meaning "writer," to lexikon, meaning "dictionary," to form lexikographos, the direct ancestor of the English word lexicographer. Lexikon, which itself descends from Greek lexis (meaning "word" or "speech"), also gave us lexicon, which can mean either "dictionary" or "the vocabulary of a language, speaker, or subject."
Examples of lexicographer in a Sentence
Longreads, 1 July 2025
After graduating, Wallace-Hadrill worked as a lexicographer for the Oxford English Dictionary.
—Maureen MacKey, FOXNews.com, 30 Mar. 2025
Esme was the motherless daughter of one of the lexicographers, and spent her youth sitting under the table in the Scriptorium while words were sorted and accepted or discarded.
—The Know, The Denver Post, 2 Mar. 2025
But popularity isn’t the only factor lexicographers consider when determining the word of the year.
—Sarah Kuta, Smithsonian Magazine, 25 Nov. 2024
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Cite this Entry
“Lexicographer.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lexicographer. Accessed 11 Jul. 2025.
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lexicographer
noun
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