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The American Heritage was designed to take advantage of the reaction against the Merriam-Webster Third. In 1969 came The American Heritage Dictionary, edited by William Morris, who was known for his valuable small dictionary Words (1947). The comments were collected in a “casebook” titled Dictionaries and That Dictionary, edited by James H.
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by many cultivated speakers.” Such publicity aroused a storm of denunciation in newspapers and magazines by writers who, others asserted, revealed a shocking ignorance of the nature of language. (Because it, together with its supplements, is now available online, it is regularly updated.) The prepublication publicity emphasized quotations from writers dismissed as ephemeral, such as Polly Adler, Ethel Merman, and Mickey Spillane, as well as the dictionary’s statement about ain’t as “used orally in most parts of the U.S.
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At its first publication it stood alone among American dictionaries in giving a full report on the lexicon of present-day English. The second edition, completely reedited, appeared in 1934, and it, in turn, was superseded in 1961 by the Third New International, edited by Philip Babcock Gove. The Merriam-Webster New International of 1909 had a serene, uncluttered air. was acquired by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., in 1964.)
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The Merriam-Webster Collegiate series was subsequently extended to 8th (1973), 9th (1983), 10th (1993), and 11th (2003) editions. (Barnhart also carried on Thorndike’s work in the Thorndike-Barnhart dictionaries after Thorndike’s death.) After mid-century, other college-size works were revised to meet that competition: Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language (1951), the Merriam-Webster Seventh New Collegiate (1963), and the Standard College Dictionary (1963).) An especially valuable addition was The Random House Dictionary (1966), edited by Jess Stein in a middle size called “the unabridged” and by Laurence Urdang in a smaller size (1968). Barnhart in The American College Dictionary ( ACD), in 1947.
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The new mode was carried on to the college level by Clarence L. He drew upon his word counts and his “semantic counts” to determine inclusions. His dictionaries were not “museums” but tools that encouraged schoolchildren to learn about language. Thorndike produced a series for schools ( Beginning, Junior, and Senior). Their form had become stultified until, in the 1930s, Edward L.
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Such abridgments date to the 18th century. Most people know dictionaries in the abridged sizes, commonly called “desk” or “college-size” dictionaries. SpaceNext50 Britannica presents SpaceNext50, From the race to the Moon to space stewardship, we explore a wide range of subjects that feed our curiosity about space!Įntry for the word harlequin from the ninth edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary.Learn about the major environmental problems facing our planet and what can be done about them!
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