Webster's Dictionary Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
advertisment for Webster's Dictionary]]Webster's Dictionary is an American English language dictionary initially published by Noah Webster in 1806. The phrase Webster's has become a genericized trademark for dictionaries. The modern Merriam-Webster dictionaries are the direct descendant of Noah Webster's lexicographical tradition. Other modern-day dictionaries that use the phrase include dictionaries by the publishers Random House and John Wiley.
| Table of contents |
|
2 Webster's Third New International 3 The future 4 The name "Webster" used by others 5 Links 6 References |
19th and early 20th century editions
Noah Webster, the author of extremely popular readers and spelling-books for schools, published his first dictionary in 1806, called the Compendious Dictionary. In it, he introduced features that would be a hallmark of future editions such as American spellings (center rather than centre, honor rather than honour) and including technical terms from the arts and sciences rather than confining his dictionary to literary words. He spent the next two decades working to expand his dictionary.
Webster published his American Dictionary of the English Language in 1828, which is considered the direct ancestor of today's Merriam-Webster dictionaries. It was published in two quarto volumes and contained 70,000 entries. (Webster's chief competitor, Joseph Emerson Worcester, published an abridgement of it in 1829.) Webster also edited the Revised Edition, published in 1840. Upon Webster's death in 1843, the unsold books and all rights to the copyright and name "Webster" were purchased by brothers George and Charles Merriam who then hired Webster's son-in-law Chauncey A. Goodrich, a professor at Yale College, to oversee revisions. Under Goodrich, the Merriams published the New and Revised Edition on September 24, 1847 and a Revised and Extended Edition in 1859.
The G. & C. Merriam Company published an entirely new American Dictionary of the English Language, commonly known as the Unabridged, in 1864, which was edited by Noah Porter, President of Yale. It contained 114,000 entries and was three times the size of the 1828 edition. Further revisions of the Unabridged appeared in 1879 with a Pronouncing Biographical Dictionary and in 1884 with a Pronouncing Gazeteer.
Porter was editor of a completely new work, Webster's International Dictionary, published in 1890 and containing 175,000 entries. The name was changed because the publisher wished to reflect the wide authority the work had throughout the English-speaking world and that it was no longer solely an "American" dictionary. The dictionary was published with a Supplement in 1900, which added 25,000 more entries.
The Merriam Company issued another complete revision in 1909 under the name Webster's New International Dictionary, edited by William Torey Harris. It had 400,000 entries. In 1934, the work was again thoroughly revised under editor William Allen Neilson under the name Webster's New International Dictionary, Second Edition, popularly known as the Webster's Second. Early editions of this work contain the famous lexicographic error dord. It was a massive work, five inches thick and containing 3,400 pages.
Webster's Third New International
After years of periodic revisions, Merriam issued the entirely new Webster's Third New International Unabridged in September 1961, edited by Philip Babcock Gove and containing 450,000 entries. This is familiarly known as Webster's Third. The final definition, zyzzogeton, was written on October 17, 1960, the final etymology was done on October 26, and the final pronunciation was done on November 9. Final copy went to the typesetters, R. R. Donnelly, on December 2. The book was printed by the Riverside Press in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The first edition had 2,726 pages, weighted thirteen and one-half pounds, and originally sold for $47.50.
Gove radically remade the dictionary. First, he eliminate the "non-lexical matter" from the dictionary, information such as entries on famous people, characters in fiction, geographical places, and other material that while useful was not strictly about language. Ostensibly this was done for reasons of space as Webster's Second had almost reached the limits of mechanical bookbinding. Gove also justified the change by the company's publication of Webster's Biographical Dictionary in 1943 and Webster's Geographical Dictionary in 1949. However, the change bothered many users of the dictionary who were accustomed to the dictionary being a one-volume reference source. To conserve space, Gove also reduced the body text by one-twelfth, reducing it from six point to agate type.
More fundamental criticisms concerned the dictionary's style, beginning with how words were entered. It did not capitalize any headwords (except for "God" and, in the reprints, trade-marks). Instead of capitalizing "American", for example, the dictionary had labels next to the entries reading cap (for the noun) and usu cap (for the adjective). Defenders argued that this allowed informative distinctions to be drawn: "gallic" is usu cap while "gallicism" is often cap and "gallicize" is sometimes cap.
Webster's Third was heavily criticized for its "permissiveness" and its refusal to take a position on what was "good" English, critics comparing it unfavourably with the Second Edition. As Herbert Morton put it, "Webster's Second was more than respected. It was accepted as the ultimate authority on meaning and usage and its preeminence was virtually unchallenged in the United States. It did not provoke controversies, it settled them." Critics charged that the dictionary was reluctant to defend standard English, for example entirely eliminating the labels "colloquial", "correct", "incorrect", "proper", "improper", "erroneous", "humorous", "jocular", "poetic", and "contemptuous", among others.
Gove's stance was an exemplar of descriptivist linguistics, aiming to represent the English language as it is actually spoken and written by most users rather than an elite making pronouncements. David M. Glixon in the Saturday Review described the new approach: "Having descended from God's throne of supreme authority, the Merriam folks are now seated around the city desk, recording like mad." Jacques Barzun said this stance made Webster's Third "the longest political pamphlet ever put together by a party," done with "a dogma that far transecnds the limits of lexicography. The dictionary's treatment of "ain't" was subject to particular scorn, the word receiving no more severe comment from Webster's Third than "though disapproved by many and more common in less educated speech, used orally in most parts of the U.S. by many cultivated speakers esp. in the phrase ain't I".
The Globe and Mail of Toronto editorialized "a dictionary's embrance of the word 'ain't' will comfort the ignorant, confer approval upon the mediocre, and subtly imply that proper English is the tool of only the snob." The New York Times editorialized that "Webster's has, it is apparent, surrendered to the permissive school that has been busily extending its beachhead in English instruction in the schools . . . reinforced the notion that good English is whatever is popular" and "can only accelerate the deterioration" of the English language. The Times 's widely respected Theodore Bernstein, its in-house style maven and a professor of journalism at Columbia University, ordered that the Times 's dictionary-of-record would continue to be the Webster's Second. (It today uses the Webster's New World Dictionary published by John Wiley.) Garry Wills in the National Review opined the new dictionary "has all the modern virtues. It is big, expensive, and ugly. It should be a great success."
Among the dictionary's strengths are its unusually large number of pronunciation variants - even going so far as to indicate clearly the rhotic and non-rhotic variations. Like the smaller Merriam-Webster dictionaries, it also contains short discussions of the differences between synonymous words. Most important for users, its definitions are clear and precise and its comprehensive coverage, containing more than 450,000 entries.
The criticism spurred the creation of the American Heritage Dictionary, where usage notes were determined by an panel of expert writers, commentators, and speakers.
This is an Article on Webster's Dictionary. Page Contains Information, Facts Details or Explanation Guide About Webster's Dictionary The future
Since publication of the dictionary, Merriam-Webster has periodically released supplements. The Third New International Dictionary is also now available online. Webster's triumphed over its competition, such as The Century Dictionary, because of its continual revisions. While its competitors simply reprinted and slightly revised their works, the Merriam Company regularly issued complete overhauls of their work. However, supplements aside, no new edition of the dictionary has now been produced for more than 40 years, a surprisingly long time - perhaps partly a result of its mixed reception. It is not now known when Merriam-Webster plans to publish the next edition.The name "Webster" used by others
The Merriam-Webster Company goes to great pains to remind the public that it alone is the heir to Noah Webster and that other publishers labeling their work "Webster's" are not. Webster's became a genericized trademark in the early Twentieth Century after a series of adverse court decisions. American courts ruled that "Webster's" entered the public domain when the Unabridged did, in 1889 in G. & C. Merriam Co. v. Ogilvie, 159 Fed. 638 (1908) and another court ruled in 1917, that it entered the public domain in 1834 when the 1806 dictionary's copyright lapsed. Publishers Random House and John Wiley presently issue dictionaries unrelated to Merriam-Webster under the name "Webster's".Links
The dictionary's 1913 version has in modern times been used in various free online resources, as its copyright lapsed and it became public domain. Some of these resources include:
References