 The 1947 edition of The American College Dictionary. | |
| Country | United States |
|---|---|
| Subject | Reference |
| Published | 1947 |
| Publisher | Random House |
The American College Dictionary was the first Random House dictionary and was later expanded to create the Random House Dictionary of the English Language . First published in 1947, The American College Dictionary was edited by Clarence Barnhart based on the 1927 New Century Dictionary .
The Random House publishing company entered the reference book market after World War II. They acquired the rights to the Century Dictionary and the Dictionary of American English , both out of print. [1] [2]
Many scholars participated in the development of the dictionary with over 300 specialists assisting. [3] For medical and psychological in the dictionary, many physicians in the New York City area where Random House was headquartered gave their assistance. [3] In 1947, the dictionary was published, being edited by Clarence Barnhart and was based primarily on The New Century Dictionary, an abridgement of the Century. [1] [2] It was originally sold for $5.00 and included 1432 pages. [3]
In the late 1950s, it was decided to publish an expansion of the American College Dictionary, which had been modestly updated with each reprinting since its publication. Under editors Jess Stein and Laurence Urdang, they augmented the American College Dictionary with large numbers of entries in all fields, primarily proper names, and published it in 1966 as The Random House Dictionary of the English Language: The Unabridged Edition . It was the first dictionary to use computers in its compilation and typesetting.
When the American College Dictionary was first published, The Journal of the American Medical Association called it "more modern than any other similar book" and that the dictionary had included "considerable information not available in other dictionaries, such as rules for punctuation, proofreader's marks and notes on footnotes and bibliography". [3]
American writer, broadcaster, and logophile Charles Harrington Elster described the 1947 edition of the American College Dictionary as a "landmark" among dictionaries. [4]
A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically, which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologies, pronunciations, translation, etc. It is a lexicographical reference that shows inter-relationships among the data.
Webster's Dictionary is any of the English language dictionaries edited in the early 19th century by American lexicographer Noah Webster (1758–1843), as well as numerous related or unrelated dictionaries that have adopted the Webster's name in honor. "Webster's" has since become a genericized trademark in the United States for English dictionaries, and is widely used in dictionary titles.
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The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia is one of the largest encyclopedic dictionaries of the English language. In its day it was compared favorably with the Oxford English Dictionary, and frequently consulted for more factual information than would normally be the case for a dictionary.
The Macquarie Dictionary is a dictionary of Australian English. It is generally considered by universities and the legal profession to be the authoritative source on Australian English. It also pays considerable attention to New Zealand English. Originally it was a publishing project of Jacaranda Press, a Brisbane educational publisher, for which an editorial committee was formed, largely from the Linguistics department of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. It is now published by Macquarie Dictionary Publishers, an imprint of Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd. In October 2007 it moved its editorial office from Macquarie University to the University of Sydney, and later to the Pan Macmillan offices in the Sydney central business district.
James Harrington was an English political theorist of classical republicanism. He is best known for his controversial publication The Commonwealth of Oceana (1656). This work was an exposition of an ideal constitution, a utopia, designed to facilitate the development of the English republic established after the regicide, the execution of Charles I in 1649.
Eric Honeywood Partridge was a New Zealand–British lexicographer of the English language, particularly of its slang. His writing career was interrupted only by his service in the Army Education Corps and the RAF correspondence department during World War II.
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Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language is an American dictionary first published in 1951 and since 2022 published by Harper Collins Publishers.
Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary is a large American dictionary, first published in 1966 as The Random House Dictionary of the English Language: The Unabridged Edition. Edited by Editor-in-chief Jess Stein, it contained 315,000 entries in 2256 pages, as well as 2400 illustrations. The CD-ROM version in 1994 also included 120,000 spoken pronunciations.
Clarence Lewis Barnhart (1900–1993) was an American lexicographer best known for editing the Thorndike-Barnhart series of graded dictionaries, published by Scott Foresman & Co. which were based on word lists and concepts of definition developed by psychological theorist Edward Thorndike. Barnhart subsequently revised and expanded the series and with the assistance of his sons, maintaining them through the 1980s.
Robert K. Barnhart was an American lexicographer and editor of various specialized dictionaries. He was co-editor, with his father Clarence Barnhart, on some editions of the Thorndike-Barnhart dictionaries and The World Book Dictionary. With his father and Sol Steinmetz, he edited the three volumes of The Barnhart Dictionary of New English.
David K. Barnhart is an American lexicographer who specializes in new words. He began his career helping his father, Clarence Barnhart, edit the Thorndike-Barnhart dictionary series.
The World Book Dictionary is a two-volume English dictionary published as a supplement to the World Book Encyclopedia. It was originally published in 1963 under the editorship of Clarence Barnhart, who wrote definitions for the Thorndike-Barnhart graded dictionary series for children, based on the educational works of Edward Thorndike whom Clarence Barnhart had known and worked with decades before. In some editions it was called the World Book Encyclopedia Dictionary. The writing and editing of special articles was carried out by the staff of the World Book Encyclopedia. Encyclopedia staff also reviewed the work for consistency with the encyclopedia and appropriateness of its users.
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A pronunciation respelling for English is a notation used to convey the pronunciation of words in the English language, which does not have a phonemic orthography.
F.A. Davis Company is a publishing firm headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, founded by F. A. Davis (1850–1917). Davis publishes mostly textbooks and reference books for the medical, nursing, and health-related professions fields.
Sol Steinmetz was a Hungarian American linguistics and lexicography expert who wrote extensively about etymologies, definitions and uncovered earliest recorded usages of words in English and Yiddish. A widely sought source on all things lexical, he earned recognition from William Safire in his On Language column in The New York Times Magazine in 2006 as a "lexical supermaven".
Oscar Pelham Edgar was a Canadian teacher. He was a full professor and head of the Department of English at the Victoria College, Toronto from 1910 to 1938. He wrote many articles and several monographs on English literature. He had a talent for identifying and encouraging promising new authors. He was an active member of various literary societies, and was the force behind the establishment of the Canadian Writers’ Foundation to help needy authors.
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