The DA Supplement: 'All's Grist That Comes to Our Mill'

Abstract

U PON THE publication of the Dictionary of Americanisms, nearly two years ago, a prominent critic observed, in his syndicated book column: This is in truth a magnificent achievement, but it is merely a beginning, not an end. If this reviewer knows anything, he continued, hundreds of Americans will now flood the editor with amendments, additions and other suggestions for future (and, it is hoped, cheaper) editions of this pioneer dictionary.' Like anticipations were also voiced by a number of other well-wishers, but as yet no such help has been forthcoming. The few letters that have trickled in to Dr. Mathews during the ensuing twenty-one months have simply pointed out one or two omissions and have furnished fewer than a dozen antedatings. As one of those 'harmless drudges'2 charged with the responsibility of amassing the materials for a prospective supplement to the DA, I am naturally disappointed by this lack of response on the part of the American public. Yet the fact must be faced that the average person has no more than a passing interest in the subject. If he chances upon the DA in one of the larger libraries and is stimulated to write its editor, it is only to offer his own wild notions about the origins of a word, or to call attention to the 'startling omission' of some 'everyday Americanism' (that goes way back to Adam!). He displays not the slightest interest in voluntarily collecting materials-the one way in which he might make himself of genuine service to historical lexicography. This is indeed a sorry state of affairs, and such public indifference to lexicographic needs could very well spell the doom of any hopes for the eventual appearance of a reasonably adequate dictionary of the American language. Without public interest, we have no expectation of ever matching the nine million quotations gathered by the army of volunteer readers enlisted by the Oxford English Dictionary. Nor can we even hope to match the one million quotations collected, with the assistance of four hundred University of Chicago students, by the editors of the Dictionary of American English. For the sad truth is that the DA, as the latest of the several historical dictionaries, had the benefit of but a mere 3oo,ooo quotation slips-or no more than were con-