Argument
Webster's Third New International Dictionary
Overview
Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (also known as Webster's Third, or W3) is an American English-language dictionary published in September 1961. It was edited by Philip Babcock Gove and a team of lexicographers who spent 757 editor-years and $3.5 million. The most recent printing has 2,816 pages, and as of 2005, it contained more than 476,000 vocabulary entries (including more than 100,000 new entries and as many new senses for entries carried over from previous editions), 500,000 definitions, 140,000 etymologies, 200,000 verbal illustrations, 350,000 example sentences, 3,000 pictorial illustrations and an 18,000-word Addenda section.
The final definition, Zyzzogeton, was written on October 17, 1960; the final etymology was recorded on October 26; and the final pronunciation was transcribed on November 9. The final copy went to the typesetters, R. R. Donnelley, on December 2. The book was printed by the Riverside Press in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The first edition had 2,726 pages (measuring 9 in or 230 mm wide by 13 in or 330 mm tall by 3 in or 76 mm thick), weighed 13+1⁄2 lb (6.1 kg), and originally sold for $47.50 ($512 in 2025 dollars). The changes were the most radical in the history of the Unabridged.
The dictionary became part of a controversy in the 1960s between advocates of linguistic prescriptivism and linguistic descriptivism. The third edition was more descriptivist than the second edition, acknowledging the existence of non-standard forms without necessarily calling them invalid or improper; this attracted criticism from prescriptivists who believed that the dictionary was abandoning its duty to set a standard of proper English.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
But in the majority of inferior languages, the process of “agglutination,” as it is called, has gone far enough to produce considerable stability in the compound words: there is a manifest integration. How small is the degree of this integration, however, when compared with that reached in well-developed languages is shown both by the great length of the compound words used for things and acts of constant…
Herbert Spencer, First Principles
States what Webster's Third New International Dictionary is.
The same may be said in their numbers, in the use of which they are subjected to invariable rules, which they are scarcely ever allowed to transgress. The two arts, therefore, are to be considered neither as wholly distinct, nor perfectly conjoined.
Marcus Tullius Cicero, Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators
States what Webster's Third New International Dictionary is.
This seems, accordingly, to be the universal practice of all the ancient languages.
Adam Smith, The Essays of Adam Smith
States what Webster's Third New International Dictionary is.
Related ideas
- American English
- Merriam-Webster
- The New York Times
- The New Yorker
- Dwight Macdonald
- Cambridge, Massachusetts
Place in the tradition
Part of Consciousness.
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