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| Published | 1951 |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, HarperCollins |
| Media type | Dictionary |
Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language is an American dictionary published first in 1951 and since 2022 by HarperCollins Publishers. [1]
| | |
| Published | 1951 |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, HarperCollins |
| Media type | Dictionary |
Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language is an American dictionary published first in 1951 and since 2022 by HarperCollins Publishers. [1]
The first edition was published by the World Publishing Company of Cleveland, Ohio, in two volumes or one large volume, including a large encyclopedic section. In 1953, World published a one-volume college edition (Webster's New World College Dictionary), without the encyclopedic material. It was edited by Joseph H. Friend and David B. Guralnik [2] [3] [4] and contained 142,000 entries, said to be the largest American desk dictionary available at the time.
The second college edition, edited by Guralnik, was published in 1970. World Publishing was acquired by Simon & Schuster in 1980 and they continued the work with a third edition in 1989 edited by Victoria Neufeldt. A fourth edition was edited by Michael Agnes and published by John Wiley & Sons in 1999, containing 160,000 entries; a fifth, edited by Andrew N. Sparks et al. and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2014, contains around 165,000. [5]
One of the salient features of Webster's New World dictionaries has been its unusually full etymology, that is, the origin and development of words and the relationship of words to other Indo-European languages. The work also labels words which have a distinctly American origin.
The college edition is the official desk dictionary of The New York Times , [6] The Wall Street Journal , [7] The Washington Post , [8] and United Press International. [9] It was the primary dictionary of the AP Stylebook from 1977 [10] [11] until 2024, when it reverted to Merriam-Webster. [12] [13]
Although the title refers to Noah Webster, the work is unrelated to the series of Webster's dictionaries published by the Merriam-Webster Company, which indeed are descended directly from Noah Webster's original publications. By contrast, Webster's New World Dictionary merely cites Webster as a generic name for any American English dictionary, as does Random House's line of Webster's Unabridged and derived dictionaries.
Webster's New World student and children's editions are produced for younger readers.
Aegospotami or Aegospotamos is the ancient Greek name for a small river issuing into the Hellespont, northeast of Sestos.
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.
A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926), by Henry Watson Fowler (1858–1933), is a style guide to British English usage, pronunciation, and writing. Covering topics such as plurals and literary technique, distinctions among like words, and the use of foreign terms, the dictionary became the standard for other style guides to writing in English. Hence, the 1926 first edition remains in print, along with the 1965 second edition, edited by Ernest Gowers, which was reprinted in 1983 and 1987. The 1996 third edition was re-titled as The New Fowler's Modern English Usage, and revised in 2004, was mostly rewritten by Robert W. Burchfield, as a usage dictionary that incorporated corpus linguistics data; and the 2015 fourth edition, revised and re-titled Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage, was edited by Jeremy Butterfield, as a usage dictionary. Informally, readers refer to the style guide and dictionary as Fowler's Modern English Usage, Fowler, and Fowler's.
Webster's Dictionary is any of the English language dictionaries edited in the early 19th century by Noah Webster (1758–1843), an American lexicographer, as well as numerous related or unrelated dictionaries that have adopted the Webster's name in his honor. "Webster's" has since become a genericized trademark in the United States for English dictionaries, and is widely used in dictionary titles.
Merriam-Webster, Incorporated is an American company that publishes reference books and is mostly known for its dictionaries. It is the oldest dictionary publisher in the United States.
A demonym or gentilic is a word that identifies a group of people in relation to a particular place. Demonyms are usually derived from the name of the place. Demonyms are used to designate all people of a particular place, regardless of ethnic, linguistic, religious or other cultural differences that may exist within the population of that place. Examples of demonyms include Cochabambino, for someone from the city of Cochabamba; French for a person from France; and Swahili, for a person of the Swahili coast.
The Associated Press Stylebook, alternatively titled The Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law, is a style and usage guide for American English grammar created by American journalists working for or connected with the Associated Press journalism cooperative based in New York City. The Stylebook offers a basic reference to American English grammar, punctuation, and principles of reporting, including many definitions and rules for usage as well as styles for capitalization, abbreviation, spelling, and numerals.
The Portrait of a Lady is a novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly and Macmillan's Magazine in 1880–81 and then as a book in 1881. It is one of James's most popular novels and is regarded by critics as one of his finest.
Joseph Emerson Worcester was an American lexicographer who was the chief competitor to Noah Webster of Webster's Dictionary in the mid-nineteenth-century. Their rivalry became known as the "dictionary wars". Worcester's dictionaries focused on traditional pronunciation and spelling, unlike Noah Webster's attempts to Americanize words. Worcester was respected by American writers and his dictionary maintained a strong hold on the American marketplace until a later, posthumous version of Webster's book appeared in 1864. After Worcester's death in 1865, their war ended.
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.
The American Dialect Society (ADS), founded in 1889, is a learned society "dedicated to the study of the English language in North America, and of other languages, or dialects of other languages, influencing it or influenced by it." The Society publishes the academic journal American Speech.
Despite the various English dialects spoken from country to country and within different regions of the same country, there are only slight regional variations in English orthography, the two most notable variations being British and American spelling. Many of the differences between American and British/English in the Commonwealth of Nations date back to a time before spelling standards were developed. For instance, some spellings seen as "American" today were once commonly used in Britain, and some spellings seen as "British" were once commonly used in the United States.
Mary Chavelita Dunne Bright, better known by her pen name George Egerton, was a writer of short stories, novels, plays and translations, noted for her psychological probing, innovative narrative techniques, and outspokenness about women's need for freedom, including sexual freedom. Egerton is widely considered to be one of the most important writers in the late nineteenth century New Woman movement, and a key exponent of early modernism in English-language literature. Born in Melbourne, Colony of Victoria, she spent her childhood in Ireland, where she settled for a time, and considered herself to be "intensely Irish".
Irregardless is a word sometimes used in place of regardless or irrespective, which has caused controversy since the early twentieth century, though the word appeared in print as early as 1795.
Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged is an American English-language dictionary published in September 1961. It was edited by Philip Babcock Gove and a team of lexicographers who spent 757 editor-years and $3.5 million. The most recent printing has 2,816 pages, and as of 2005, it contained more than 476,000 vocabulary entries, 500,000 definitions, 140,000 etymologies, 200,000 verbal illustrations, 350,000 example sentences, 3,000 pictorial illustrations and an 18,000-word Addenda section.
Merriam-Webster's Geographical Dictionary is a gazetteer by the publisher Merriam-Webster. The latest edition was released in 2001, edited by Daniel J. Hopkins and contained over 54,000 entries. The first edition was published in 1949 and the second edition in 1972.
Dichlorodiphenyldichloroethane (DDD) is an organochlorine insecticide that is slightly irritating to the skin. DDD is a metabolite of DDT. DDD is colorless and crystalline; it is closely related chemically and is similar in properties to DDT, but it is considered to be less toxic to animals than DDT. The molecular formula for DDD is (ClC6H4)2CHCHCl2 or C14H10Cl4, whereas the formula for DDT is (ClC6H4)2CHCCl3 or C14H9Cl5.
Garner's Modern English Usage (GMEU), written by Bryan A. Garner and published by Oxford University Press, is a usage dictionary and style guide for contemporary Modern English. It was first published in 1998 as A Dictionary of Modern American Usage, with a focus on American English, which it retained for the next two editions as Garner's Modern American Usage (GMAU). It was expanded to cover English more broadly in the 2016 fourth edition, under the present title. The work covers issues of usage, pronunciation, and style, from distinctions among commonly confused words and phrases to notes on how to prevent verbosity and obscurity. In addition, it contains essays about the English language. An abridged version of the first edition was also published as The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style in 2000 and a similar version was published in The Chicago Manual of Style 16th edition in 2017. The latter includes three sections titled "Grammar", "Syntax" and "Word Usage", each with several subcategories.
Kory Stamper is a lexicographer and former associate editor for the Merriam-Webster family of dictionaries. She is the author of Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries.