As Ravid & Tolchinsky (2002) have indicated in their article, literacy has profound effects upon the development of language in school-age children, adolescents, and adults. Once children are able to read proficiently – typically by eight or nine years – their ability to acquire increasingly sophisticated aspects of language can expand greatly. The convergence of language and literacy is readily apparent upon examining the lexicon, a language domain that is subject to unlimited growth through the lifespan. For this reason, I would like to elaborate on the role of literacy in relation to lexical development beyond the preschool years, focusing on processes that facilitate the learning of word meanings. In this commentary, it will be shown that there is an ongoing reciprocal relationship between lexical development and literacy in which unfamiliar words are first encountered in print and learned through various metalinguistic strategies. Subsequently, this increased knowledge of words leads to improved comprehension of text, which in turn, leads to further expansion of the lexicon (Sternberg & Powell, 1983).