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| Parent company | Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1831; 194 years ago (1831) |
| Founder | George Merriam, Charles Merriam |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Headquarters location | 47 Federal Street, Springfield, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Publication types | Reference books,online dictionaries |
| Owner | Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. |
| Official website | merriam-webster |
Merriam-Webster, Incorporated is anAmerican company that publishesreference books and is mostly known forits dictionaries. It is the oldest dictionary publisher in the United States.[1]
In 1831,George and Charles Merriam founded the company asG & C Merriam Co. inSpringfield, Massachusetts. In 1843, afterNoah Webster died, the company bought the rights toAn American Dictionary of the English Language from Webster's estate. All Merriam-Webster dictionaries trace their lineage to this source.
In 1964,Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., acquired Merriam-Webster, Inc., as a subsidiary. The company adopted its current name, Merriam-Webster, Incorporated, in 1982.[2]
In 1806, Webster published his first dictionary,A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language. The following year, in 1807, Webster began two consecutive decades of intensive work to expand his publication into a fully comprehensive dictionary,An American Dictionary of the English Language. To help trace the etymology of words, Webster learned 26 languages. Webster hoped to standardize American speech, since Americans in different parts of theUnited States used somewhat different vocabularies and spelled, pronounced, and used words differently.
In 1825, while spending a year abroad at theUniversity of Cambridge and then in Paris, Webster completed this dictionary, which featured 70,000 words, about 12,000 of which had never before appeared in a dictionary. Aspelling reformer, Webster believed thatEnglish spelling rules were unnecessarily complex and used the dictionary to introduceAmerican English spellings, replacingcolour withcolor,waggon withwagon, andcentre withcenter. He also added American words, includingskunk andsquash, that did not appear in British dictionaries. Three years later, at age of 70 in 1828, Webster published the dictionary. But the dictionary proved a commercial disappointment, selling only 2,500 copies and leaving him in debt. In 1840, however, he released a second edition, which was published in two volumes and proved a vastly greater commercial success.
In 1843, following Webster's death,George Merriam and Charles Merriam secured publishing and revision rights to Webster's 1840 dictionary. Four years later, in 1847, they published a revised version of it, which did not change any of the main text but added new sections. In 1859, they published a second update with illustrations. In 1864, Merriam published a greatly expanded edition, which was the first version to change Webster's text, largely overhauling his work yet retaining many of his definitions and the title,An American Dictionary. In 1884, the edition contained 118,000 words, "3000 more than any other English dictionary".[3]
In 1890, they published a dictionary, which they retitledWebster's International. The vocabulary was vastly expanded inWebster's New International editions published in 1909 and 1934, featuring over half a million words. Their 1934 edition was retrospectively calledWebster's Second International, or simply "The Second Edition" of the New International.
In 1898,Collegiate Dictionary, now in its eleventh edition, was introduced. In 1890, following publication ofWebster's International. twoCollegiate editions were issued as abridgments of each of theirUnabridged editions.
Since the 1940s, the company has released several specialized dictionaries, language aides, and other references. In 1961, Merriam overhauled the dictionary again, publishingWebster's Third New International, edited byPhilip B. Gove, whose revisions sparked public controversy. Many of the changes were in formatting, omitting needlesspunctuation, or avoiding complete sentences when a phrase was sufficient. Other more controversial revisions signaled a shift fromlinguistic prescriptivism and towardsdescribing American English as it was used at that time.[4]
In 1964, the company became a subsidiary ofEncyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
In 1983, in the ninth edition of theCollegiate titledWebster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (WNNCD), theCollegiate adopted changes which distinguish it as a separate entity rather than merely an abridgment of theThird New International, whose main text has remained virtually unrevised since 1961. Some proper names were returned to the word list, including names ofKnights of the Round Table. The most notable change was the inclusion of the date of the first known citation of each word, to document its entry intoEnglish.
In 1983, after losing the right to exclusive use of the name Webster, its name was changed to Merriam-Webster, Incorporated, which was first reflected with publication ofWebster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary. Previous publications used 'A Merriam-Webster Dictionary as a subtitle.
In 2003, the eleventh edition ofCollegiate, was published, including over 225,000 definitions and more than 165,000 entries. ACD-ROM of the text is sometimes included. This dictionary is the preferred source "for general matters of spelling" byThe Chicago Manual of Style, which is followed by many U.S.-based book publishers and magazines. TheChicago Manual states that it "normally opts for" the first spelling listed.[5]
The dictionary maintains an active social media presence, where it frequently posts dictionary-related content and its views on politics. ItsTwitter account frequently used dictionary jargon to criticize and lampoon theTrump administration.[6][7] In November 2021, for instance, Merriam Webster subtly accusedKyle Rittenhouse of fake crying at his trial in a tweet that went viral.[8]
In 1996, Merriam-Webster launched its first website, which provided free access to an online dictionary andthesaurus.[9]
Merriam-Webster has also published dictionaries ofsynonyms,English usage,geography in itsMerriam-Webster's Geographical Dictionary,biography,proper names,medical terms,sports terms,slang, Spanish/English, and others. Non-dictionary publications includeCollegiate Thesaurus,Secretarial Handbook,Manual for Writers and Editors,Collegiate Encyclopedia,Encyclopedia of Literature, andEncyclopedia of World Religions.
On February 16, 2007, Merriam-Webster announced the launch of a mobile dictionary andthesaurus service developed with Ask Me How, a mobile search and information provider. Consumers can use the service to access definitions, spelling, and synonyms viatext message. Other services include Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day and Open Dictionary, awiki service, which provides subscribers the opportunity to create and submit their own new words and definitions.[10]
The Merriam-Webster company once used a unique set ofphonetic symbols in their dictionaries—intended to help people from different parts of the United States learn how to pronounce words the same way as others who spoke with the same accent or dialect did.Unicode accommodatedIPA symbols from Unicode version 1.1 published in 1993, but did not support the phonetic symbols specific to Merriam-Webster dictionaries until Unicode version 4.0 published in 2003. Hence, to enable computerized access to the pronunciation without having to rework all dictionaries to IPA notation, the online services of Merriam-Webster specify phonetics using a less-specific set ofASCII characters.
Merriam creates entries by finding uses of a particular word in print and recording them in a database ofcitations.[4] Editors at Merriam spend about an hour a day looking at print sources, from books and newspapers to less formal publications, like advertisements and product packaging, to study the uses of individual words and choose things that should be preserved in the citation file. Merriam-Webster's citation file contains more than 16 million entries documenting individual uses of words. Millions of these citations are recorded on3-by-5 cards in their paper citation files. The earliest entries in the paper citation files date back to the late 19th century. Since 2009, all new entries are recorded in an electronic database.[4]
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