For those of you keeping track, this is my 260th weekly column about words and language for this newspaper. It’s also my last.

While the decision to end this weekly endeavor wasn’t entirely my own (something about budget cuts for freelancers at the newspaper), it happened at about the right time. You see, coming up with a few hundred words that make sense every week takes a lot more research than I’d ever imagined it would. Yes, I’ve learned a lot writing this column but it’s also taken a lot of time.

On the bright side, I got to live out my Walter Mitty fantasy of being a newspaper columnist — if only for a little while. And along the way I had the great pleasure of working with an editor whose changes never failed to improve upon what I’d written (sometimes I think he cared more about my column than I did).

I’ve also learned a lot from readers who’d sometimes write in and let me know about the miscues I’d made about everything from Greek root words to members of the Algonquin Round Table (Heywood Hale Broun is the son of Heywood Broun, by the way). Because of that, I’m now more often correct when I yell answers (not in the form of a question) at the TV during “Jeopardy!” every evening.

So after five years exactly (I can’t believe it either) of writing this “In a word” column, I’ll now have a lot more free time every Sunday, which is when I usually labored over each piece slated to run a week later.

The one thing I feel the need to confess is the fact that when I was trying to figure out how this column was going to go, I saw myself as the curmudgeon who’d be saying that there was a right way and a wrong way of writing something or of using a certain word. Boy was I wrong.

Along the way I slowly came to figure out that our wonderful language has always evolved, it’s still evolving and always will. I also eventually conceded that the dictionary is not a proscriptive list of words, telling us how they must be used, but rather a descriptive resource telling us how the meanings of words are evolving as they gain new definitions — and sometimes lose old ones.

I hope that like me, you, too, will continue to explore the fascinating world of words, to appreciate their power, and to use them with intention and creativity. Keep asking questions, keep challenging assumptions, and keep celebrating the beautiful, messy, ever-changing tapestry of human language.

Meanwhile, I’ll continue to try to not let Mrs. Word Guy solve more words than I can during our morning rounds of Wordle, Quordle and Octordle (she’s very good). With all my newfound free time I’ll probably even take a swing at The New York Times crossword puzzle every Sunday. Heck, I might even take the opportunity to rant about something in a letter to the editor now and then.

May all your words be good ones. Thank you for reading.