Dictionaries long have been the go-to source for the meaning of words in statutes when there are questions of ordinary meaning or ambiguity. But dictionaries do not always lead to a clear result. The majority opinion in Muscarello v. United States, 524 U.S. 125 (1998), provides an interesting discussion of the shortcomings of dictionaries and other literature. The Oxford English Dictionary included alternate meanings that would encompass the interpretations of both the majority and the dissent. Other dictionaries were similarly imperfect, as were various sources in the Bible and English literature. That two textualists were on opposite side of the battle provides particular irony.

Since Muscarello, a number of articles in the legal literature have reviewed the many instances when statutory meaning can be particularly elusive and considered applying current-day computer analyses to the task—a study that has come to be known as “corpus linguistics.” A concurrence in Wilson v. Safelite Grp., Inc., 2019 U.S. App. LEXIS 20472 (6th Cir. July 10, 2019) (Thapar, J., concurring), suggested “adding this tool to [courts’ interpretive] belts.”