''Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language'' is an American

dictionary A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically (or by radical and stroke for ideographic languages), which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologies ...

first published in 1951 and since 2022 published by

Harper Collins Publishers HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News Corp ...

Overview

The first edition was published by the

World Publishing Company The World Publishing Company was an American publishing company. The company published genre fiction, trade paperbacks, children's literature, nonfiction books, textbooks, Bibles, and dictionaries,Cleveland, Ohio Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

, 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 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 by

Simon & Schuster Simon & Schuster () is an American publishing company and a subsidiary of Paramount Global. It was founded in New York City on January 2, 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. As of 2016, Simon & Schuster was the third largest publ ...

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 by

John Wiley & Sons John Wiley & Sons, Inc., commonly known as Wiley (), is an American multinational publishing company founded in 1807 that focuses on academic publishing and instructional materials. The company produces books, journals, and encyclopedias, in p ...

in 1999, containing 160,000 entries; a fifth, edited by Andew N. Sparks et al. and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2014, contains around 165,000. One of the salient features of ''Webster'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 of the

Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. newspa ...

, ''

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'', ''

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

'', ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

'', and

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Publisher

Although the title refers to

Noah Webster Noah ''Nukh''; am, ኖህ, ''Noḥ''; ar, نُوح '; grc, Νῶε ''Nôe'' () is the tenth and last of the pre-Flood patriarchs in the traditions of Abrahamic religions. His story appears in the Hebrew Bible (Book of Genesis, chapters 5– ...

, the work is unrelated to the series of

Webster's ''Webster's Dictionary'' is any of the English language dictionaries edited in the early 19th century by American lexicographer Noah Webster (1758–1843), as well as numerous related or unrelated dictionaries that have adopted the Webster's ...

dictionaries published by the

Merriam-Webster Merriam-Webster, Inc. is an American company that publishes reference books and is especially known for its dictionaries. It is the oldest dictionary publisher in the United States. In 1831, George and Charles Merriam founded the company as ...

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 does

Random House Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Germ ...

's line of ''Webster's Unabridged'' and derived dictionaries. ''Webster's New World'' student and children's editions are produced for younger readers.

References

External links

*Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language. College Edition (1st edition 1953), here reprint (1966): https://archive.org/details/webstersnewworld00clev/page/n5/mode/2up *Webster's New World Dictionary of the American language. Second College Edition (1970): https://archive.org/details/webstersnewworld00gura_1 *Webster's New World Dictionary. Third College Edition (1988): https://archive.org/details/webstersnewworld3rd00neuf/mode/2up *Webster's New World College Dictionary. Fourth Edition (1999): https://archive.org/details/webstersnewworld00agne_0/mode/2up *Webster's New World College Dictionary. Fifth Edition (2014): https://archive.org/details/webstersnewworld0000unse_k1f4/page/n5/mode/2up

External links

Official website
{{authority control 1951 non-fiction books English dictionaries Houghton Mifflin books

Overview

Publisher

See also

References

External links

External links