''Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language'' is an American dictionary published first in 1951. As of 2022, the work is owned by HarperCollins Publishers.

Overview

The first edition was published by the World Publishing Company of Cleveland, 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 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 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 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. The latest publication of the Fifth Edition is 2020, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. The newest edition contains 1728 pages. 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 ''

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. It was the primary dictionary of the ''

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'' from 1977 until 2024, when it reverted to

Merriam-Webster Merriam-Webster, Incorporated is an list of companies of the United States by state, American company that publishes reference work, reference books and is mostly known for Webster's Dictionary, its dictionaries. It is the oldest dictionary pub ...

Publisher

Although the title refers to Noah Webster, the work is unrelated to the series of Webster's dictionaries published by the

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 imprint and publishing group of Penguin Random House. Founded in 1927 by businessmen Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer as an imprint of Modern Library, it quickly overtook Modern Library as the parent imprint. Over the foll ...

's line of ''Webster'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), and ''Webster’s New World® Crossword Puzzle Dictionary, 2nd Ed.'' (2017 Trade paperback.)Editors of Webster's New World College Dictionaries , URL: https://www.harpercollins.com/blogs/authors/editors-of-websters-new-world-college-dictionaries-74661 , HarperCollins Publishers (accessed 30 September 2024)

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