 | |
| Published | 1951 |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt,HarperCollins |
| Media type | Dictionary |
Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language is an Americandictionary published first in 1951. As of 2022, the work is owned byHarperCollins Publishers.[1]
The first edition was published by theWorld Publishing Company ofCleveland, Ohio, in two volumes or one large volume, including a large encyclopedic section. In 1953, World published a one-volume college edition (Webster's New World College Dictionary), without the encyclopedic material. It was edited by Joseph H. Friend and David B. Guralnik[2][3][4] and contained 142,000 entries, said to be the largest American desk dictionary available at the time.
The second college edition, edited by Guralnik, was published in 1970. World Publishing was acquired bySimon & Schuster in 1980 and they continued the work with a third edition in 1989 edited by Victoria Neufeldt. A fourth edition was edited by Michael Agnes and published byJohn Wiley & Sons in 1999, containing 160,000 entries; a fifth, edited by Andrew N. Sparks et al. and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2014, contains around 165,000 and 1703 pages.[5] The latest publication of the Fifth Edition is 2020, published byHoughton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. The newest edition contains 1728 pages.[6]
One of the salient features ofWebster's New World dictionaries has been its unusually full etymology, that is, the origin and development of words and the relationship of words to other Indo-European languages. The work also labels words which have a distinctly American origin.
The college edition is the official desk dictionary ofThe New York Times,[7]The Wall Street Journal,[8]The Washington Post,[9] andUnited Press International.[10] It was the primary dictionary of theAP Stylebook from 1977[11][12] until 2024, when it reverted toMerriam-Webster.[13][14]
Although the title refers toNoah Webster, the work is unrelated to the series ofWebster's dictionaries published by theMerriam-Webster Company, which indeed are descended directly from Noah Webster's original publications. By contrast,Webster's New World Dictionary merely cites Webster as a generic name for any American English dictionary, as doesRandom House's line ofWebster's Unabridged and derived dictionaries.
Webster's New World student and children's editions were produced for younger readers but were discontinued since 1996. Dictionaries for foreign languages, American English, Large Print, and English writing style guides have also been produced.
As of 2024, its current publisher offers only the following works:Webster's New World College Dictionary, Fifth Edition (2020 hardcover),Webster’s New World Dictionary, Fifth Edition (2016 mass market paperback),Webster's New World Pocket Dictionary, Fourth Edition (2016 Trade Paperback),Webster's New Roget's Pocket Thesaurus (2008 Trade paperback), andWebster’s New World® Crossword Puzzle Dictionary, 2nd Ed. (2017 Trade paperback.)[15]