Orin Hargraves was born in Denver and grew up in Creede, Colorado. He graduated from the University of Chicago (BA with Honors) in 1977. He served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco in the 1980s. He is the author of three guidebooks in the Culture Shock! series: Morocco, London, and Chicago. He began his career in lexicography while living in London in the early 1990s. He has since written numerous articles and books about language, as well as contributing to dozens of dictionaries from publishers internationally. At present he lives in Niwot, Colorado and conducts research at CU-Boulder in linguistics and natural language processing. He is past president of the Dictionary Society of North America. He writes the monthly "Language Lounge" column for VisualThesaurus.com.