Merriam 39;s Dictionary

[Kenneth Melniczek]

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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]

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.

The worldwide coronavirus pandemic has pushed terms once heard almost exclusively in medical circles onto everyone's tongue, including subvariant, booster dose, and emergency use authorization, which are all new dictionary entries.

The newcomers include overly involved "helicopter parents," for instance, and the "boomerang child" who's returned home in adulthood for financial reasons. Maybe he's spending his days listening to "Americana" music, steering clear of that lonely "cougar" across the street and hanging out a lot with his best buddy, shaking off jokes that they're in a "bromance." And, of course, he "tweets" every detail of it.

The wordsmiths at the Springfield, Mass.-based dictionary publisher said they picked the new entries after monitoring their use over several years and watching for references in a variety of sources, including mainstream media outlets.

"Even if people had no interest or possible chance of getting a Twitter account themselves, they now have to know what `tweet' means, and that's really why it's in the dictionary," said Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster's editor at large.

"It's not just because the users of that service are so numerous, although they are. It's because even the non-users have to know what that word means because they'll encounter it so often in everyday use," he said.

A London-based competitor, the Oxford English Dictionary, also recognized the growing service when it added "retweet" to its Oxford English Concise version this summer with other technology-influenced terms like cyberbullying, which already had a spot in Merriam-Webster's dictionary.

Another noteworthy newcomer: "fist bump," which Merriam-Webster President and Publisher John Morse says he considers "the star of the group" for its ability to succinctly capture the movement and emotion of that simple act of solidarity.

Two people can take special credit for the elevation of "fist bump" into the dictionary: President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, whose knuckle-knocking gesture of affection when he accepted the 2008 nomination was described by The Washington Post as "the fist bump heard `round the world."

The act of bumping the front of a closed fist against that of another person has been common for years in sports. Some media outlets have also speculated it might have grown as a way to avoid handshakes and germs, or as a hip alternative to the high-five.

When the presidential candidate in a major American political party does a fist bump with his wife on worldwide television, there's no question that the term has earned its place in the dictionary, Morse said.

"Everything else on the (new words) list can be somewhat tied into a theme, whether it's technology or social change or sports. But fist bump is just pure American culture expressing itself in its own vocabulary," Morse said.

Other new words for 2011 in Merriam-Webster include terms heavily influenced by new technology, like m-commerce (business transactions conducted by using a mobile device); and by sports, including walk-off (ending a baseball game by scoring the home team's winning run in the bottom of the last winning).

Others, like cougar - an often unflattering term for a middle-aged woman on the hunt for a younger man - might not have made it into the dictionary because of their slang roots, but became too widely used to overlook.

The music genre known as Americana, with roots in early folk and country music, has been popular in certain circles for years, but gained enough widespread attention recently to place the term among other new dictionary entries.

The Grammy Awards have included a separate category for the best Americana album since 2009, and some of its best-known musicians - including John Hiatt, Emmylou Harris, Levon Helm and Steve Earle - have had crossover success on other genres' hit charts.

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