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Merriam-Webster's Time Traveler tool sorts English words by birth year [1]

['Grant St. Clair']

Date: 2026-08-17  

Just today, I became a time traveler. Unfortunately, you'll need to put aside the images of a humble writer running from dinosaurs or flirting with Cleopatra running through your head right now, but the reality is still pretty cool. What I mean is that I checked out Merriam-Webster's "time traveler" tool, which lets one take a far less literal look into the past.

Befitting its nature as a living language and the world's lingua franca, the English lexicon is always expanding. If you have kids and/or you've spent any time trying to puzzle out what "unc is chopped" means, you already understand this principle. As the world's foremost dictionary publisher, Merriam-Webster has as much authority as anyone to decide what makes the cut and passes into "official" English when they're not punking AI bros.

So it is that the Time Traveler tool has come to exist: every word in the English language that can be traced back to a specific year, sorted into those years, eventually dating back to before the 12th century. Although it's fun to see how the language evolved in real time, it's even cooler to see what words you share a birth year with. (I got "twerking," "cornhole" and "awesomesauce," in case anyone was wondering.)

My birth was an ill portent of the Internet of Things, apparently.

Will yours be less embarrassing? If you were born before 2000, probably!

Previously:

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[1] Url: https://boingboing.net/2026/08/17/merriam-webster-s-time-traveler-tool-sorts-english-words-by.html

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