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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]
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.
Merriam-Webster's Twitter account weighs in on trending words and phrases and has waded into linguistic matters in politics, including a big campaign question: Did Donald Trump say "bigly" or "big league"? Marian Carrasquero/NPR hide caption
That memo was at least implied this week when the dictionary publisher tweeted the definition of a fact just hours after Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway appeared on Meet The Press and referred to statements by White House press secretary Sean Spicer about the inaugural crowd size as "alternative facts."
The idea for those tweets came from the dictionary's Trend Watch feature, Lauren Naturale, social media manager at Merriam-Webster, told Vox.com. When people are looking up a word at a higher rate than usual as related to an event, Merriam-Webster shares that trend and adds context on the word's meaning and how it was used.
On Monday, Merriam-Webster subtly scolded the Trump team again, this time in response to a spike in searches for the word "claque." The searches were likely in response to reports that the people who cheered Trump during his visit to CIA headquarters were not actually agency staffers but Trump supporters invited for the occasion.
When Trump accused China of stealing a U.S. drone back in December, calling the act "unpresidented," Merriam-Webster's Twitter account mocked the president-elect for misspelling "unprecedented" and making up a new term. Trump corrected himself and deleted the tweet, but by then Merriam-Webster had already tweeted "Huh" as its word of the day.
After Trump's comments referring to "bad hombres," the dictionary's site saw a surge in searches for the word "ombr" but was quick to point out the difference between the two words. "Hombre" is the Spanish word for "man," while "ombr" refers to "having shades or colors that fade into each other."
And the dictionary publisher attempted to set the record straight on a major perplexing question of the campaign: Did Trump say "bigly" or "big league"? Merriam-Webster highlighted that "bigly" is in fact a real word, but concluded that Trump was using "big league" as an adverb, which is uncommon.
Despite all of this mocking, Naturale clarifies that Merriam-Webster's social media strategy goes beyond that. She says it reflects Merriam-Webster's quirky identity while furthering its goal of sharing knowledge as experts on language.
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.
"It is permissible in English for a preposition to be what you end a sentence with," the dictionary publisher said in a post shared on Instagram last week. "The idea that it should be avoided came from writers who were trying to align the language with Latin, but there is no reason to suggest ending a sentence with a preposition is wrong."
The emotionally charged response to the post doesn't surprise Ellen Jovin, who travels the country with her "grammar table" fielding questions about Oxford commas, apostrophes and other hot-button linguistic topics.
Jovin sees concluding preposition opponents as operatives of a sort of sunk cost fallacy. People have invested a lot of time in finding ways to not end clauses and sentences with prepositions. So, when someone comes along and tells you there's no such rule, it's human nature to cling tighter to something that cost so much time and energy.
In the FAQ section of the entry for prepositions, Merriam-Webster states: "The people who claim that a terminal preposition is wrong are clinging to an idea born in the 17th century and largely abandoned by grammar and usage experts in the early 20th."
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