Meriam Mir Dictionary
Ellington Walford
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In 1831, George and Charles Merriam founded the company as G & C Merriam Co. in Springfield, Massachusetts. In 1843, after Noah Webster died, the company bought the rights to An American Dictionary of the English Language from Webster's estate. All Merriam-Webster dictionaries trace their lineage to this source.
In 1806, Webster published his first dictionary, A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language. In 1807 Webster started two decades of intensive work to expand his publication into a fully comprehensive dictionary, An American Dictionary of the English Language. To help him trace the etymology of words, Webster learned 26 languages. Webster hoped to standardize American speech, since Americans in different parts of the country used somewhat different vocabularies and spelled, pronounced, and used words differently.
In 1843, after Webster's death, George Merriam and Charles Merriam secured publishing and revision rights to the 1840 edition of the dictionary. They published a revision in 1847, which did not change any of the main text but merely added new sections, and a second update with illustrations in 1859. In 1864, Merriam published a greatly expanded edition, which was the first version to change Webster's text, largely overhauling his work yet retaining many of his definitions and the title "An American Dictionary". This began a series of revisions that were described as being "unabridged" in content. In 1884 it contained 118,000 words, "3000 more than any other English dictionary".[4]
With the edition of 1890, the dictionary was retitled Webster's International. The vocabulary was vastly expanded in Webster's New International editions of 1909 and 1934, totaling over half a million words, with the 1934 edition retrospectively called Webster's Second International or simply "The Second Edition" of the New International.
The Collegiate Dictionary was introduced in 1898 and the series is now in its eleventh edition. Following the publication of Webster's International in 1890, two Collegiate editions were issued as abridgments of each of their Unabridged editions. Merriam overhauled the dictionary again with the 1961 Webster's Third New International under the direction of Philip B. Gove, making changes that sparked public controversy. Many of these changes were in formatting, omitting needless punctuation, or avoiding complete sentences when a phrase was sufficient. Others, more controversial, signaled a shift from linguistic prescriptivism and towards describing American English as it was used at that time.[5]
With the ninth edition (Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (WNNCD), published in 1983), the Collegiate adopted changes which distinguish it as a separate entity rather than merely an abridgment of the Third New International (the main text of which has remained virtually unrevised since 1961). Some proper names were returned to the word list, including names of Knights of the Round Table. The most notable change was the inclusion of the date of the first known citation of each word, to document its entry into the English language. The eleventh edition (published in 2003) includes more than 225,000 definitions, and more than 165,000 entries. A CD-ROM of the text is sometimes included. This dictionary is preferred as a source "for general matters of spelling" by the influential The Chicago Manual of Style, which is followed by many book publishers and magazines in the United States. The Chicago Manual states that it "normally opts for" the first spelling listed.[6]
The G. & C. Merriam Company lost its right to exclusive use of the name "Webster" after a series of lawsuits placed that name in public domain. Its name was changed to "Merriam-Webster, Incorporated", with the publication of Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary in 1983. Previous publications had used "A Merriam-Webster Dictionary" as a subtitle for many years and will be found on older editions.
Since the 1940s, the company has added many specialized dictionaries, language aides, and other references to its repertoire. The company has been a subsidiary of Encyclopdia Britannica, Inc., since 1964.
The dictionary maintains an active social media presence, where it frequently posts dictionary related content as well as its takes on politics. Its Twitter account has frequently used dictionary jargon to criticize and lampoon the Trump administration.[7][8] In one viral tweet, Merriam Webster subtly accused Kyle Rittenhouse of fake crying at his trial.[9]
Merriam creates entries by finding uses of a particular word in print and recording them in a database of citations.[5] Editors at Merriam spend about an hour a day looking at print sources, from books and newspapers to less formal publications, like advertisements and product packaging, to study the uses of individual words and choose things that should be preserved in the citation file. Merriam-Webster's citation file contains more than 16 million entries documenting individual uses of words. Millions of these citations are recorded on 3-by-5 cards in their paper citation files. The earliest entries in the paper citation files date back to the late 19th century. Since 2009, all new entries are recorded in an electronic database.[5]
Webster hated the French with a passion and even started a daily newspaper in 1793 in part to combat French influence over the U.S. The American Minerva promoted a pro-Federalist and pro-American agenda while also documenting the atrocities carried out by the Jacobins. Following a speaking tour in the American South, he was horrified by the dialect of his countrymen, citing their pronunciation of common words as repugnant and criticizing their schoolrooms as disgraceful or nonexistent.
By the time Webster began writing his dictionary in the early 1800s, public interest in his vast linguistic project had waned, and so he found fresh energy from a new source: God. While working in his study in 1808, Webster said he spoke with God, falling to his knees and confessing his sins. From that day forward he was a devout Calvinist and a born-again Christian, and his understanding of the dictionary shifted to incorporate his newfound evangelism. He became convinced of the literal truth of the book of Genesis and the Tower of Babel, believing that all humans had spoken the same language at the beginning of time. With this conviction, he embarked on a series of wildly unscientific etymological investigations, trying to find common roots for words in languages originating in Asia, Africa, and Europe.
The final project, at last published in 1828, is a work of gargantuan proportion, containing some seventy thousand words, including nouns that did not exist in England, such as skunk and squash. Webster erased some of his more radical spellings, such as wimmen for women and tung for tongue, but the removal of u in words such as honor remained.
Nearly two centuries later, at a time when truth is increasingly undervalued and American exceptionalism is widely embraced, the dictionary takes on fresh significance. Words, like the dictionaries that define them, have little intrinsic meaning. Those in power can wield them as an instrument for untruthful, or even tyrannical, ends. In a time of fake news and alternative facts, the usage of even simple words can serve to ensnare the listener rather than to educate him.
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary API gives developers access to a comprehensive resource of dictionary and thesaurus content as well as specialized medical, Spanish, ESL, and student-friendly vocabulary. Make your applications better by integrating our authoritative definitions, etymologies, audio pronunciations, synonyms and antonyms, and more. Our robust API empowers developers to enhance word games and create educational, language learning, and other word-related applications for the digital environment. We look forward to seeing all of the new, innovative products powered by Merriam-Webster's trusted references.
If you are creating an in-text citation for a dictionary entry, you would follow APA's standard in-text citation guidelines of including the first part of the reference and the year. For example, your in-text citations might look like this: (Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 1999) or (Onomatopoeia, n.d.). These in-text citations would then align with your reference list citations.
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