Dictionaries: Print to Online

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Anita. I’m calling from Lindenhurst, Illinois.

Hi, Anita.

Hi, Anita. What’s up?

Well, I love my unabridged dictionary, and I would have a very hard time parting with it.

But I have some questions about it.

We like you already.

What dictionary do you have?

I have the Random House Dictionary of the English Language, the second edition, unabridged, 1987,

And it has a dedication to the memory of just Stein.

Okay, 1987.

Okay, so what are your questions?

Well, the first thing that that tells you is that was pre-internet.

Yeah.

So, you know, our language has picked up a lot of words since then.

And it occurred to me, my unabridged has its own little book stand

And a reverent place here in my office at home, and I love it.

But it’s really huge.

And so I wondered, when we pick up new words, as we have with the Internet especially, in order to keep it from being bulky, do they drop off words?

Oh, yeah.

That’s a yes and no answer.

I’ll just give you that.

So the unabridged is a special case compared to all other dictionaries.

So we’re talking only about these massive dictionaries that try to be as inclusive as possible.

All right?

So just to make sure our constraints are clear here.

I talked to some of the editors and lexicographers at Merriam-Webster about this, Peter Sokolowski, Corey Stamper, Emily Brewster.

And what they said is in between the first and the second editions of Merriam-Webster’s unabridged, some words were removed.

But between the second and third, and they’re working on the third now, they’re not going to remove anything because the third edition is going to be all online.

Right now, it doesn’t look like they’re actually going to make it paper.

And so the words that are taken out for unabridged, though, tend to be proper nouns that are no longer significant, or they tend to be errors or things that are so utterly archaic that they’re like in one source ever.

Like maybe it was like one word used one time in one really rare manuscript from like, you know, 1412 or something.

And there’s just no reason to include it there.

But for the most part, they try to keep as much as they can.

Now, smaller dictionaries, now that we’re not talking about unabridged, they take stuff out all the time, but they never tell you that.

Really, they do.

Sometimes they’ll take thousands of words out between editions.

And for the really small dictionaries, sometimes they’re completely new.

It’s not even a revision.

It’s just new content they brought over from another dictionary and stripped down to meet the needs, the size constraints and the content, the topical restraints.

Now, you’re in a particular position here, Anita, with the dictionary that you have, that Random House has long since, decades ago, stopped working on any dictionaries.

They do not update that dictionary anymore.

They do not even have a lexicography program.

That whole program was canceled in the 90s.

And so you will never get an update to that dictionary.

Wow, I have a precious addition here.

Well, you do.

You’re missing a lot.

You are missing a ton of technical, scientific, Internet-related terms.

And I’m not talking about OMG and LOL.

I’m talking about scientific advances in DNA, in chemistry, in space exploration.

I mean, you’re missing probably, I’d say, 10,000 to 50,000 entries easily.

So what would you say, if I may ask, is there a year that has already been printed that would be the most updated with all of that information in it?

I always recommend two dictionaries, that everyone have two dictionaries because they each have their own strengths.

First, I would get the latest American Heritage Dictionary.

It is an unabridged dictionary.

It’s well done.

It has excellent etymologies.

And then I would probably also get an online subscription to the Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged.

I mean, if you’re looking for utter completeness, I would do those two things.

They’re very complementary to each other.

They feed on each other very well.

And you can compare their entries side by side and see that they’re both well done,

And yet they may have a little different nuance that allows you to, at the intersection between entries,

Maybe understand what you’re looking up even more.

We are the best of both worlds there.

Yeah, yeah.

And the American Heritage Dictionary has much better photos and pictures.

Yeah, they do.

American Heritage does color photos.

Oh, nice.

And Merriam-Webster traditionally has done woodcuts or black-and-white line drawings.

Yeah.

Well, I have one more question, if I may, and that is that if at some point,

Because I’m getting older now and I would hate to see my kids come along after I pass

And then just toss my treasured, unabridged out somewhere,

Is there a place that these dictionaries that are no longer being printed, they could be received and welcomed as a donation?

I mean, is there a place like that?

There is.

The dictionary that you have is not particularly rare, or they’re not going to accept it probably.

You might take it to a bookstore and see if they would buy it, but it’s only going to go for a few dollars.

But there are places like in Terre Haute, Indiana, there’s something called the Cordell Collection,

Which is a really great family collection of a wide variety of some incredibly rare and valuable dictionaries,

But some are in there just because they represent a life’s work for a lexicographer

Or because they’re the best of their kind and that sort of thing.

So there are places that do record and keep dictionaries for all time.

They save them so that centuries or even millennia from now, we will not have lost their contents.

Yes, especially as we’re going online.

I just love to think that they are being preserved.

Yeah.

And, Nita, I want to thank you so much.

You have such the best questions, and they speak to the dictionary editor in my heart.

Oh, thank you so much.

Yeah, our pleasure.

Thanks for calling.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

We do have dictionary recommendations on the website.

If you’re looking to buy a dictionary and you want to see more fully my opinions on which dictionaries are good to go,

Just go to waywordradio.org and look under References.