lexicon •\ˈlek-sə-ˌkän also -kən\• noun 1. a dictionary 2. a language user's knowledge of words The word lexicon has appeared in 116 New York Times articles in the past year, including on Dec. 24 in "The Wind Cries ... Oe?" by Mark Vanhoenacker: When I studied to become a pilot, I learned the names of the winds. It's hard to not be charmed by their poetry - the Sahara's Harmattan, France's Mistral, and the Oe, that consonant-denuded Faroe Islands whirlwind. ... California, though, has nothing on Hawaii. The wind beneath the wings of the Hawaiian-born Bette Midler could be a Ho'oluawahakole, a Malamalamamaikai or any of hundreds of other orthographic jawbreakers (best check a wind map). Many names have fallen from use, but they once carried enormous cultural weight, says Steven Businger, a meteorologist at the University of Hawaii. Hawaii's lexicon of winds is surely America's richest, but it isn't entirely alone. Chicago has the evocatively named Hawk wind, and the Great Lakes have the Witch of November, notorious for sinking the freighter Edmund Fitzgerald, with the loss of all 29 men aboard, in November 1975. Gore Vidal named "Williwaw," his first novel, for the Aleutian Islands" bitter blasts. But the most famous North American wind is undoubtedly the Chinook (co-marketed with a salmon, a helicopter and New Hampshire's state dog). Learn more about the word "lexicon" and see usage examples across a range of subjects on the Vocabulary dictionary.