American Dictionary Research Articles

"So called in America": Nationalism, Nativism, and the Representation of Indigenous Languages in Noah Webster's American Dictionary of the English Languag e (1828)

ABSTRACT: This study explores Noah Webster's representation of vocabulary derived from indigenous languages in the first edition of his American Dictionary of the English Language (1828). Previous scholarship on Webster has revealed much about how his lexicography reflected his nationalist politics, but the role that his treatment of indigenous languages plays in this narrative has not been explored. By analyzing words with indigenous origins as a distinct category within the Dictionary and bringing to light new evidence of Webster's etymological theories towards indigenous languages, this study emphasizes nativism as a tool in Webster's nationalist project and explores the historic treatment of indigenous languages and cultures in American dictionaries.

Orígenes de la lexicografía del español en América: primeros repertorios y esbozos metodológicos

The origins of the lexicography of Spanish in America are found in various works such as glossaries, vocabularies, relationships, indexes, tables, etc., which have some common characteristics: they are simple and concise repertoires that are created because they are useful to understand the historical-geographical and literary texts, being usually appendices of a few dozens of words; in some cases they contain technical words or are included in dictionaries of another type. Twelve of these works are analyzed up to the beginning of the 17th century to show how lexicographical methods and techniques are outlined, which are the embryo of the later concept of dictionary of Americanisms.

“Appropriate” Meanings and American Traits in Webster’s 1828 Dictionary

During the eighteenth century, many philosophers were attempting to determine the origin of language and to develop a universal theory of linguistics, but a debate at the Prussian Royal Academy questioned the endeavour by claiming that languages have different origins and that it is impossible to explain the progress of human thought by studying them because national languages influence the way their speakers see the world. In answer to that, Webster proposes that all modern languages have a common divine origin and that the universal truth could be accessed by studying etymology. He claims that words have an “absolute” significance, which, due to the development of the different languages, assumed meanings that are “appropriate” to each individual language. This article proposes that nationalism in the American Dictionary of the English Language is not represented by a substantial number of Americanisms, but by giving “appropriate” meaning that evidences how “absolute” significances evolved and came to characterize the United States. The article provides evidence to support that Webster’s lexicographic contribution is constituted by the new organization he gives to the entries and by definitions that show how old terms came to represent new concepts when compared to those in Samuel Johnson’s dictionary.

‘Clean, Fix, and Grant Splendor’: The Making of Diccionario de Autoridades

Abstract Hailed as the foundation of modern Spanish-language lexicography, the Diccionario de Autoridades was developed over a period of thirteen years. While it is a window to appreciate the impact of Enlightenment ideas in Spain, it also showcases some of the country's most entrenched phobias, both within and throughout its colonies across the Atlantic. This essay looks at its planning, structure, and publication in political, cultural, and linguistic terms. It analyses its legacy over the Dicionario de la Lengua Española, which is the organ of the Real Academia Española and on other Spanish-language lexicons. And it compares it with the work of Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language and Noah Webster's An American Dictionary of the English Language. The xenophobic motto of the Real Academia Española, ‘Clean, Fix, and Grant Splendor’, long a subject of controversy, is the philosophy behind Autoridades.

The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary

In The Meaning of Everything, Simon Winchester takes the reader abroad, into the story of the language, the technology, and the myriad of personalities that makes the Oxford English Dictionary possible. This is no small feat. Winchester's power as a storyteller is firmly on display as he carries the reader through complex tasks, negotiating rules of inclusion, and defining the English language. Time and context are woven into the narrative as Winchester demonstrates how these challenges are made more complicated by the publication of Webster's 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language, by the efforts of previous dictionaries that grew out the fifteenth-century printing revolution, and by writers who champion purging English of all acquisitions not identifiable as part of the most pure “Teutonic” Old English.In addition to the narrative, it is obvious that the author has great affection for the personalities. He takes time to point out that Chenevix Trench, dean of Westminster, whose 1857 paper presentation set everything in motion, was not known for his frivolity. Winchester clarifies that Herbert Coleridge was the first editor who, despite suffering from tuberculosis, drew up the rules for the dictionary, divided up the books to be read, found a printer, and organized the first wave of volunteers. He acknowledges that Frederick James Furnivall was a bit of a rascal, but paints Furnivall's behavior in a softer light, unless the future of the OED is threatened. Indeed, as Winchester tells it, all of the odd, quirky, and eccentric contributors to the OED appear to be participating as compatriots in one long comedy of errors.Winchester's story of challenges and personalities fits nicely into the larger conversation of the OED. The seminal work Caught in the Web of Words: James A.H. Murray and the Oxford English Dictionary (1977) by K. M. Elizabeth Murray, granddaughter of James Murray, cements the place of Murray in the story of the OED. In Empire of Words: The Reign of the OED (1994), John Willinsky wrestles with the foundation of authority, questioning the effect that the dictionary has made on the language as a whole. Lynda Mugglestone in Lost for Words: The Hidden History of the Oxford English Dictionary (2005) compares the proofs of the dictionary with the final printed copy taking note of changes and the implication of what exclusion from the dictionary means. Charlotte Brewer uses the Treasure-house of the Language: The Living OED (2007) to focus on the realty of updating such a collection, specifically the tension that continues between those concerned most with veracity and those concerned most with timeliness. Finally, in Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages (2007), Ammon Shea creates a catalog of his reading in appreciation of the peculiar, incidentally repeating a trend that James Murray himself complained about in 1879, when he realized that there were fifty supporting notes on abusion but fewer than five on abuse. Readers, it seems, are still less interested in ordinary words, preferring to find zebras instead of horses.In each case these authors also touch on the learned societies and scholars involved. Many also attempt to illuminate the challenges that “the Philological Society's Dictionary” faced as the understanding of the project changed. None of the authors, however, seem to do so with quite the level of delight or deft skill evident throughout Winchester's writing.There are some bumps in the story, however, that must be brought to the fore. First, Winchester's continued use of more obscure vocabulary, like Stakhanovite on page 140, is so jarring as to suggest that he is attempting to have this title serve as a supportive entry in a future OED addition. It distracts from the flow and can be hard to ignore once noticed. Second, in terms of leaving out African as a head word, one can appreciate that it was included in the first supplement and the original rationale, but the author lets the editors off the hook too easily. The pervasive cultural bias this represents is given no more than a passing engagement. This is in stark contrast to the time the author spends calling out Henry Bradley on anti-Gallic bias.Beyond these criticisms, The Meaning of Everything is an immensely enjoyable introduction to the complex story of the Oxford English Dictionary. Winchester hooks the reader and guides the reading through what could, in other hands, be considered both exceedingly complex and dry content matter. Library historians will find the title a good start to understanding the choices, compromises, and processes that go into developing reference tools. All librarians should find it useful in discussing the role of such tools, as well as the role of our profession, in defining culture and inclusion.

Diccionario Biográfico de las Izquierdas Latinoamericanas. Movimientos Sociales y Corrientes Políticas

El artículo revisita la producción de diccionarios biográficos del movimiento obrero y de izquierda en América Latina para analizar los principales elementos de su producción, contrastarlos entre sí y reconocer la tradición en la que se inscriben. Ellos constituyen un verdadero acumulado desde el cual posicionarse con firmeza para emprender el ambicioso desarrollo de un Diccionario Biográfico de las Izquierdas Latinoamericanas, el cual sostiene la pretensión de pensarnos como región latinoamericana y establecer puentes entre las disímiles experiencias nacionales. Y es justamente ese diccionario, y su perspectiva teórico-metodológica puesta ya en ejecución, la que aquí se presenta.
 Como lo nombrara Francoise Dosse, estamos ante una “apuesta biográfica” más. Una que reivindica el género, el método y el recurso biográficos, sin dejar de atender a la advertencia de que su objeto privilegiado, el héroe de la historia, ha sido superado. Además, subyace el esfuerzo de conectarse con una época que retoma al sujeto, pero acusa recibo de la crítica estructuralista a la biografía. Realizado, necesaria y felizmente, a cientos de manos y “condenado” a la apertura e incompletud, el Diccionario Latinoamericano se abre camino entre fronteras diversas, com la relativa a los campos de especialidad. Y los estudios biográficos, los de las izquierdas y movimientos sociales y la historia intelectual son el trípode productivo que intenta habitar.

Americanismos en "Los gallinazos sin plumas" (1955) de Julio Ramón Ribeyro

En La expresión americana (1957), el poeta cubano José Lezama Lima adapta el concepto de barroco, que lo entiende como principio que caracteriza la historia cultural latinoamericana. El autor de Paradiso teoriza la historia cultural del continente y pone énfasis en el paisaje como ente constitutivo de su identidad. Por otro lado, es común ver al autor de Alienación como un escritor del margen, no obstante, las observaciones al texto se enmarcan dentro de la etapa histórica en la que está inscrito, a partir de un sentimiento compartido americano. En ese sentido, se analiza el conjunto de americanismos para explorar los sentidos de los vocablos. Para el análisis se utiliza el Diccionario de americanismos (2010), de la Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (ASALE).

What are the effects of national pride on prosocial behaviors? The moderating influences of group type and loyalty

Pride, according to the Oxford Advanced American Dictionary, is defined as “feeling of pleasure or satisfaction that people experience when they, or others with whom they are connected, have achieved a venerated accomplishment or own something that others admire”. It is also an important and positive moral emotion. Previous studies have found that pride is related to prosocial behaviors. In recent years, scholars have focused increasingly on collective pride, which is a phenomenon experienced by an individual due to the achievements of their in-group or arising from a sense of superiority over those of out-groups. For example, for all those belonging to the “Chinese” nationality, this identity has become a status symbol for this group. When it comes to accumulating social cohesion among people, or carrying on one’s traditional culture, one can never overemphasize the importance of national pride. However, the effects of national pride on prosocial behaviors remain unknown. The question then arises, are people more inclusive or exclusive to members of other groups with the increasing patriotic-based education in China? There are certain economic games that are typical paradigms used to measure prosocial behaviors, which were then adopted by this study for data collection. This research recruited adult Chinese citizens for its participants. In Experiment 1, we utilized emotional pictures as priming materials, with the Dictator and Ultimatum Games used as measuring paradigms. For Experiment 2, we used texts and the Trust Game to measure the prosocial behaviors enacted towards in-group (Chinese) versus out-group members (non-Chinese). We then used a between-subject design and divided the participants into three priming groups. From there, we measured their national loyalty using the loyalty subscale of The Moral Foundations Questionnaire and divided them into either the high or the low loyalty group, according to their scores. The results show that individuals in the high loyalty group were more likely to experience an intragroup preference. Furthermore, national pride priming weakened participants’ in-group preferences and increased the degree of fairness and trust experienced among high loyalty people. In summary, our study provides evidence that group-level pride is related to prosociality. Future studies may discriminate national pride from that arising from different sources, use other materials that trigger national pride, identify more reliable measurements of national pride, and explore other personality traits that may influence the effects of national pride on prosocial behaviors. To expand upon this research, more studies must be carried out in order to explore the mechanism of influence of national pride on peoples’ prosocial behaviors.

A Fair Road for Stumps: Language Ideologies and the Making of the Dictionary of American English and the Dictionary of Americanisms

In 1930, while he was working as an assistant on the Dictionary of American English (DAE) Mitford M. Mathews submitted a dissertation titled Southern Backwoods Diction 1829–1840 to the powers that were at the University of Chicago. It was rejected but supplied the DAE with entries and quotations, and it counts as an important stage of Mathews' apprenticeship. Accounting for what of the dissertation was and was not included in the DAE reveals a clash of language ideologies, British and American, underlying the project and its dictionary product, an impression fortified by Mathews' later manuscript comments and stories of decision-making at the DAE told in the column he contributed to American Speech for a decade, Of Matters Lexicographical. When Mathews edited the Dictionary of Americanisms, he included eighty-four items excluded from the DAE, a small number given the scopes of the respective dictionaries, but an ideological statement about the importance of specifically American knowledge of American English, nonetheless.

First Citations and First Occurrences: How Sensitive to Language Change Were Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century American Dictionaries?

This article compares the relative effectiveness of large, monolingual American dictionaries and a large-scale corpus of American English (Corpus of Historical American English, or COHA) at documenting new verb senses that arise from nouns through conversion, like backpack and earmark. Seventy-five such denominal verbs, established in English at varying times throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, were selected, and their first record in an American dictionary as well as their first attestation in COHA were tallied. The results show that COHA is slightly better at catching a new use in the empirical record, but dictionaries have been effective as well. For nearly a third of the words, COHA and the dictionaries were essentially tied in documenting newly emerging senses. This suggests that dictionaries have been finely attuned to changes in English throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and that a large-scale corpus like COHA will come close to matching the empirical effectiveness of dictionaries. Since each method uncovered some words much earlier than the other method, current lexicographic practice of including corpora as well as traditional methods like reading programs and citation files seems well justified.

Editorial

Editorial Edward Finegan This issue of Dictionaries is my last as editor, and toward the end of the editorial I'll offer some personal comments. First, a few words about the contents of the issue. Two articles undertake forms of forensic dictionary analysis. Javier Ruano-García continues his deep dive into Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, focusing here on the contributions of correspondents, especially women, in particular Angelina Parker. Relying crucially on the EDD Online and on manuscript evidence, Ruano-García uncovers the indispensable contributions Parker made to the EDD's Oxfordshire data. The article sheds welcome light on the important, but often overlooked, role women have played in the lexicographical enterprise. In a forensic foray of a different kind, Michael Adams explores the relationship between Mitford Mathews and Sir William Craigie in the making of the Dictionary of American English. Adams puts under the microscope eighty-four items Mathews added to his later Dictionary of Americanisms, reinstated from a dissertation he had submitted to the University of Chicago but that did not find a place in Craigie's DAE. The conflicts between OED veteran editor Craigie and the culturally proud and much younger Mathews is a compelling story of conflicting ideologies and of identity lexicography. In their article, Don Chapman, Amanda Fronk, and Mark Davies explore whether dictionaries or corpora have been more effective in identifying earliest citations. They compare the earliest dating of particular senses of seventy-five denominal verbs like earmark and upgrade in twenty monolingual American dictionaries and in the Corpus of Historical American English. Their findings indicate that neither the dictionaries nor the 400-million-word COHA invariably outperforms the [End Page ix] other, and they conclude that reading programs and citation files continue to be valuable reservoirs of data in dictionary making. The forum on vernacular lexicographies, with seven articles illustrating quite different views and approaches to the topic, is introduced by Orión Montoya, who reports being drawn to the far side of the "implicit boundary" between "real" and "lay" lexicography detected in my invitation to initiate a forum on the topic. "Who is in a position to police these borders, and how?" Montoya asks. What possibilities arise in lexicography "by looking beyond the 'essentially monumental' to consider the whole assemblage of 'domestic and functional' practices by which people grapple with meaning together? How might we understand our own lexicographical practices from that broader viewpoint?" Given Montoya's comments on individual contributions in the introduction, I need say here only that the articles are delightfully wide-ranging, touching on T-shirts and coffee mugs, on Urban Dictionary and the OED, on Polish, Spanglish, and Old English, on artists' dictionaries, talking dictionaries, and anti-dictionaries, and on demons, devils, and unicorns, as well as on the key role lay lexicography and its lexicographers play in preserving knowledge of vernacular language and culture for posterity. The year 2020 has been a difficult one around the world, and Covid-19 took the life of Madeline Kripke, a Fellow of the Dictionary Society of North America. Jonathon Green's remembrance of her is laden with fascinating and sometimes earthy details about "the dame of dictionaries" and her fabled collection. I'm grateful to David Jost, editor of DSNA's Newsletter, for allowing Green to republish his obituary in the journal. In the reviews section, Michael Adams assesses three works—Origin of Kibosh, The Life of Guy, and On the Study of Words, the last a revival of the famous Richard Chenevix Trench's nineteenth-century work. It was Trench who famously said that "in words contemplated singly, there are boundless stores of moral and historic truth, and no less of passion and imagination, laid up." Today, in an era when etymology and any focus on "words contemplated singly" has lost its glow in academic circles, Adams praises the other two books he reviews, each focusing on a single word, namely kibosh and guy. Don Chapman in his review of Describing Prescriptivism praises especially the book's treatment of the history of usage guides. In the third review, D. A. Lockhart observes that "We could stand, with little controversy, upon the principle that the two most...

A Glossary of Words and Phrases "Peculiar to the United States": The Aims and Strategies of John Russell Bartlett's Dictionary of Americanisms

John Russell Bartlett, author of the 1848 Dictionary of Americanisms, came to lexicography indirectly through his fascination with American popular culture. Nonetheless, he shaped his dictionary to conform for the most part with standard dictionaries of the time. Any deviations are usually for the purpose of serving his larger goals, such as providing cultural background. This article argues that it's worth examining Bartlett's work to understand which features of dictionaries seemed essential to a mid-nineteenth-century vernacular lexicographer. His decisions are interesting partly because he was thinking about some of the same issues as more professional lexicographers of that era, for instance how to use illustrative quotations. Bartlett was also important as a recorder of vernacular English. His work preserves many examples of slang and colloquial speech that would otherwise have been lost. The article introduces Bartlett as a scholar, and then takes a detailed look at his aims and strategies as he compiled the dictionary. A following section describes the dictionary's evolution through subsequent editions and a final section discusses Bartlett's influence on later lexicographers.

General Materials

General Materials Albert D. Pionke (bio) In this year of pandemic library closures, frustrated interlibrary loan requests, and nonexistent campus mail service, four books are featured in the general materials section. All monographs, each manifests an interest in the intersection of literary form with aesthetic, intellectual, material, political, regional, or theological history. Identifying a “key role” for the “nineteenth-century study of language” in the “emergence of popular sovereignty” during the period between the First (1832) and Third (1884) Reform Acts, Barbara Barrow’s Science, Language, and Reform in Victorian Poetry: Political Dialects (London: Routledge, 2019) proposes that Victorian poetry’s “lack of orderliness, its passages where poetic language spills over or exceeds its meter or formal confines,” be understood as philologically inflected interventions designed “to make visible the blind spots and exclusion of liberal reform” (p. 2). Max Müller’s Lectures on the Science of Language (1861)—which asserts a concurrence between political revolution and linguistic rejuvenation—provides an initial warrant for the book’s “nexus between language, philology, and politics,” itself first explored by means, not of a poem, but of Thomas Carlyle’s 1837 “experimental epic in prose,” The French Revolution (pp. 5, 6). Barrow retraces the text’s at times stylistically excessive engagement with the Revolution-era theories of language articulated within John Horne Tooke’s The Diversions of Purley (1786), Noah Webster’s Dissertations on the English Language (1789) and “Preface” to An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828), and Louis-Sébastien Mercier’s Panorama of Paris (1781–1788) and The New Paris (1789), arguing that “Carlyle’s positioning of the revolutionaries as a source of untapped, embodied potential paradoxically sets the terms for a Victorian conception of the modern polity” (p. 23). Poetic responses to Carlyle’s example, to later iterations of philological theory, and to the politics of ongoing franchise reform occupy the book’s four chapters, each of which addresses carefully selected works by one of the period’s major poets. Chapter 1 focuses on Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s incorporation of the language theories of John Locke and Étienne de Condillac in An [End Page 315] Essay on Mind (1826), A Drama of Exile (1844), and, most importantly, Aurora Leigh (1856) in order to create “a bodiless poetry as a symbolic expression of women’s exclusion from the reformed electorate” (p. 33). Chapter 2 then reinterprets Robert Browning’s The Ring and the Book (1868–1869) as a “challenge [to] the democratic pretenses of mid-Victorian philology” during the period of the Second Reform Act (1867) and Richard Chenevix Trench’s early work on what would eventually become the Oxford English Dictionary (p. 70). According to Barrow, Browning “refuses any easy consensus of the demos as imagined by Trench, showing how forms of mass consensus can perpetuate a dangerous and deadly collectivity—as in the growth of empire—as well as overlook those subjects still excluded from the political and social benefits of the reforming state” (p. 88). In chapter 3, Barrow devotes prolonged attention to Alfred Tennyson’s Maud (1855) and Idylls of the King (1859–1885), arguing that through “sound patterns, metonymic substitutions, and lupine and canine imagery, Tennyson subtly challenges the use of philology and evolutionary science as a model for British imperial sovereignty” (p. 95). The line between human and animal language appears increasingly porous in both works, exposing, in Maud, “the irresolvable crisis of Victorian class relations,” and, in Idylls, “the advent and decline of empire as a cycle of evolution from, and degeneration into, brutes” (p. 109). Finally, chapter 4 argues that Thomas Hardy’s Wessex Poems (1898) and Poems of the Past and Present (1901) “challenge the metropolitan appropriation of rural speechways into a unified vision of the nation that followed the passage of the 1884 Reform Act” (p. 127). Barrow’s short reading of “Her Dilemma” (pp. 136–137) provides what is, perhaps, the book’s best example of the interanimating relationship between metrical irregularity, word choice, and an inferable resistance to both contemporary philological theory and overly optimistic assessments of the effects of electoral reform. Whether a wider selection of poems and/or poets would sustain the correspondence between Victorian...

A Viable Option for Dictionary Pronunciation Guides

Abstract English words do not always follow simple letter-to-sound pronunciation rules, and thus readers sometimes need to look up a pronunciation of an unfamiliar word, especially in the case of children and foreign learners of English. Pronunciation guides in dictionaries take many forms. The most common guides in American dictionaries use diacritics over many of the vowels to indicate different pronunciations. We compared a commonly used diacritic system with an alternative system that uses only the 26 letters used in English. We found that the alternative system was easier for participants to learn and use to respond with the correct English spelling of a target word given the spelling from the pronunciation guide. We conclude that when dictionary makers want to find a simpler system than one with diacritics, a system such as the one tested here should be considered.

“Bridging Faith and Knowledge through Wittgenstein’s On Certainty”

This paper argues that faith and knowledge are not mutually exclusive spheres of inquiry, but overlapping in a sense that faith is a viaduct of knowledge. Ludwig Wittgenstein’s On Certainty is the major material in consideration to argue this case.
 Wittgenstein’s religious inclination is examined in the first section to set some conditions on the possibility of interpretation laid out in this article. So this reading is in no way conclusive about the seminal material being considered. But in the second section, knowledge, belief, doubt and certainty are briefly discussed to ground the notion of religious convictions as hinge beliefs. The third section is an intentional derailment from the exposition of On Certainty in the mode of interpretation being suggested. It is about a personal academic experience wherein it is argued that, if the discussion in the second section is at least plausible, academic thinking needs not to be leaning towards the mutual exclusion of faith and knowledge. It is however premised on the necessity of faith as a hinge belief in the Wittgensteinian sense. It seems then that a religious world-picture driven by faith may not be separated from the one driven by science, which is a secular world-picture.
 References
 Printed Materials
 Clack, Brian Wittgenstein, Frazer and Religion. United Kingdom: Macmillian Press Ltd.
 Labron, Tim. Wittgenstein and Theology. London: T&T Clark, 2009.
 Malcolm, Norman. Wittgenstein: A Religious Point of View? New York: Cornell University Press, 1993.
 Monk, Ray. Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of a Genius. London: Vintage Books, 1991.
 Moyal-Sharrock, Danièle. Understanding Wittgenstein’s On Certainty. United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
 Phillips, D.Z. “Religion in Wittgenstein’s Mirror.” In Wittgenstein Centenary Essays, Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement:28. Ed. A. Phillips Griffiths. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
 Rhees, Rush. Ludwig Wittgenstein: Personal Recollections. United Kingdom: Basil Blackwell Publisher Ltd., 1981.
 Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Notebooks 1914-1916. Edited by G.H. Von Wright and G.E.M. Anscombe.
 _______________. On Certainty. Edited by G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. von Wright. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1972.
 _______________. Tractatus-Logico Philosophicus, Trans. Ogden/Ramsey (London: Kegan Paul, 1922) Side-by-side-by-side edition, version 0.53 (February 5, 2018).
 E-sources
 Craig, William Lane. “The Revolution in Anglo-American Philosophy.” https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/popular-writings/apologetics/the-revolution-in-anglo-american-philosophy/ Accessed: December 8, 2018.
 Reed, Baron. "Certainty." The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Winter 2011 Edition. Edward N. Zalta, Ed, URL =<https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2011/entries/certainty/>. Accessed December 11, 2018.
 New Oxford American Dictionary, version 2.2.2, 2017.

Usage in Dictionaries: An Introduction

Usage in Dictionaries:An Introduction Edward Finegan To this day, "usage" and its treatment in American dictionaries have been influenced, if sometimes only slightly, by the hullabaloo surrounding publication of Webster's Third New International Dictionary as long ago as 1961. The character of the dictionary's lexicography and the complex reasons underlying the criticism heaped on it are described, among other sources, in two books detailing the story. Here, two observations must suffice to capture the tone of the Third's reception. The first is simply that, in its subtitle, one of the books calls the Third a "controversial dictionary" (Morton 1994), while the other's subtitle judges it "the most controversial dictionary ever published" (Skinner 2012). The second observation is that the most extraordinary response to the Third's publication was the attempt by another publisher to take control of the G. & C. Merriam Company, suppress the Third, and move ahead on production of a "fourth" edition that would satisfy the expectations of Merriam's would-be new owners. Instead, in the end, the American Heritage Publishing Company teamed up with Houghton Mifflin to produce a competing dictionary, embracing and exhibiting a different philosophy of usage. The focus of much, perhaps most, of the ire directed at the Third was its treatment of "usage"—its description of what appeared in the several million citations in Merriam's files—which was deemed to be insufficiently judgmental. The critical response made clear that more than [End Page 55] a few influential writers and publishers regarded it as a dictionary's responsibility not only to report usage but to judge it. In 1969, when the competing dictionary was published, its editor, William Morris, described his dictionary this way, implicitly contrasting its philosophy with that of the Third: It would faithfully record our language … but it would not … rest there. On the contrary, it would add the essential dimension of guidance, that sensible guidance toward grace and precision which intelligent people seek in a dictionary. … To furnish the guidance which we believe to be an essential responsibility of a good dictionary, we have frequently employed usage-context indicators such as "slang," "nonstandard," or "regional." (Morris 1969, vi–vii) Restoring some usage labels and deploying them in The American Heritage Dictionary more frequently than the Third deployed them may not have stirred the pot much. But something else in the 1969 competitor did, for in order to furnish that "essential dimension of guidance," American Heritage instituted a highly unusual, even irregular, practice in lexicography. Here's the editor again: we asked a panel of 100 outstanding speakers and writers a wide range of questions about how the language is used today, especially with regard to dubious or controversial locutions. After careful tabulation and analysis of their replies, we have prepared several hundred usage notes to guide readers to effectiveness in speech and writing. (Morris 1969, vii) There has been a good deal of critical description and evaluation of the original and subsequent panels and usage notes in successive editions of the dictionary (see, e.g., Creswell 1975, Adams 2015). My focus lies elsewhere: it is in what Morris wrote next: As a consequence [of relying on the panel for judgments], this Dictionary can claim to be more precisely descriptive, in terms of current usage levels, than any heretofore published—especially in offering the reader the lexical opinions of a large group of highly sophisticated fellow citizens. (Morris 1969, vii) [End Page 56] In that statement, American Heritage broadened the traditional understanding of "descriptive" to encompass opinions held by "sophisticated fellow citizens" about specific locutions, not—as had generally been the case in dictionaries—descriptions of actual usage: what people in fact wrote and said. At best, then, Morris's view blurred the distinction between descriptive lexicography (which he endorsed) and prescriptive lexicography (which went unmentioned). When I organized a seminar on usage in dictionaries and handbooks in the spring of 2019, I sought to avoid a focus on the Third and its fallout. I invited seminar papers mostly from scholars and lexicographers in countries whose political and lexicographical histories differ from those of the US. Here, in this forum, the papers initially presented...

The Century Dictionary Definitions of Charles Sanders Peirce

Charles Sanders Peirce, the eminent American philosopher who is widely credited with many important contributions to modern thought, lived much of his adult life in dire poverty and was forced to take paid employment where he found it. Among his myriad writing gigs was a considerable stint in lexicography: he contributed about 6,000 definitions to The Century Dictionary and edited many more. I examine Peirce's definitions in the context of his other writing and intellectual pursuits. Using the API supplied by Wordnik and Sketch Engine software, I have also constructed two corpora from Century definitions, representing those written by Peirce and those written by others, in order to look at the statistical properties of his lexicographic output. Examination of the corpora at the macro level reveals no significant differences between the definitions written by Peirce and by others, but individual study of Peirce's definitions in this great American dictionary is a source of insight into his interests, preoccupations, and analytical approach that has so far scarcely been tapped.

Particularities of the Spanish Language in Uruguay

The purpose of this article is to analyze the particular characteristics of the Spanish language in Uruguay, which is a variety of the Spanish language in Rio de la Plata (Argentina, Chili, Paraguay) and represents a special interest for the linguists, professors of Spanish language and foreign experts who go to work in Uruguay. We analyze the history of this particular language variety beginning from the epoch of the Spanish conquest, the influence of the local American languages (in particular of the Guarani Indians), as well as the Italian language and its dialects due to an important immigration from this country. We also pay attention to the phenomenon of the bilingualism, in other words the influence of the Portuguese language (the well-known “Portunol”) and the influence of the French language after the French immigration of the XIX century that led to gallicisms in Spanish language. All these facts provoked such linguistic characteristics as “an untypical use of some pronouns, a less rhythmical intonation and a very special vocabulary to compare with classical Spanish of Spain. The study is based on our own notes made during two trips to Uruguay, and on the “New Dictionary of Americanisms”, books of the history of Latin America and scientific works of the philologists who dedicated their studies to this subject.

Feminism as a Political Ideology

AbstractFeminism is one of the most important ideologies in the contemporary society. It influences not only the inter-political process but also international one. The word “feminism” has been named word of the year by the American dictionary Merriam-Webster in 2017

Contrasts in American and British Dictionary Cultures: The View from Marketing

How dictionaries are marketed gives a picture of the ways in which dictionary publishers help to create, support, and maintain the contrasting “dictionary cultures” of the UK and US. Such materials show American dictionaries promoted as a tool for people from all walks of life, able to help in social, educational, and economic advancement. British domestic dictionary promotion, on the contrary, has focused more on the accuracy of the record of the language, with some attention to enjoyment of language. This article draws on archival materials concerning Merriam-Webster and Oxford University Press one-volume dictionaries in the twentieth century and situates them within the context of the culture of the written word in the US and UK.