16. A Comparison of Usage Panel Judgments in the American Heritage Dictionary 2 and Usage Conclusions and Recommendations in Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage

Abstract

Until the twentieth century, books containing information about usage—about which of a num ber of optional ways of expressing a given m eaning are part of the standard language and which are not—have largely been authoritarian and prescriptive in nature. In Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary (1755) for example, m ore than a thousand words or uses of words are accompanied by restrictive labels or comments expressingjohnson’s opinion, often forcefully stated, as to the suitability or correctness of a locution. Subsequent dictionaries have continued Johnson’s practice, and they have been jo ined by scores of grammars, handbooks, and guides to “good usage.” With only a few exceptions, for example Joseph Priestley’s The Rudiments of English Grammar (1761), not until this century have there been usage books which, instead of expressing the judgm ent of the author about the appropriateness or correctness of a usage, have attem pted to determ ine and describe standard spoken and written English. Two recent works are representative of the two ways of treating usage. The older tradition is represented in a special way by The American Heritage Dictionary (Boston: Houghton Mifflin; ed. William Morris; hereafter AHD1). It first appeared in 1969 and was advertised as the answer and antidote to a claimed abrogation of responsibility in matters of correct usage by the editor of Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (1961). A sec­ ond edition of the American Heritage, published in 1982, carried on the tradition, claiming to contain “hundreds of usage notes [re­ flecting] the opinions of the distinguished Usage Panel.” The source of guidance in both editions is a Usage Panel (105 persons in the first edition) of “those professional speakers and writers who have dem onstrated their sensitiveness to the language and their