Kory Stamper

Kory Stamper

Author and Lexicographer

A person with short purple hair, glasses, and a patterned green and white sleeveless top poses against a dark background.

Kory Stamper is a lexicographer who has written dictionaries for nearly 30 years at Merriam-Webster, Cambridge Dictionaries, and Dictionary.com. She is the author of Word by Word. Her writing has appeared in The Guardian, The New York Times, New York, and The Washington Post. She blogs regularly on language and lexicography at www.korystamper.com.

Book cover of "True Color" by Kory Stamper, featuring illustrations of twelve colored book spines—echoing the era of the dye famine—arranged in a grid on a beige background.
When America lost access to German dyes, the crisis revealed a startling truth: color was chemical, tactical, and essential to warfare.