Webster's New World Dictionary

Compact school and office edition, 1967

Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language is an American dictionary first published in 1951 and currently published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.[1]

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, 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 and Schuster in 1980 and they continued the work with a third edition in 1989 edited by Victoria Neufeldt. A fourth edition was published in 1999, containing 160,000 entries; a fifth, published in 2014, contains around 165,000.[2]

One of the salient features of Webster's New World dictionaries has been an 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.

Pearson bought the reference division of Simon & Schuster in 1998 and sold it to IDG Books in 1999. John Wiley & Sons acquired IDG Books (renamed Hungry Minds) in 2001. The college edition is the official desk dictionary of the Associated Press[3] and The New York Times. John Wiley & Sons sold the dictionary line to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in November 2012.

Although the title refers to Noah Webster, the work is unrelated to the series of Webster's dictionaries published by the Merriam-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 does Random House's line of Webster's Dictionaries.

Webster's New World student and children's dictionaries are of particular interest to young readers.

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ "Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Acquires Award-Winning Culinary Program, Webster’s New World Reference Titles and CliffsNotes Guides from John Wiley & Sons, Inc". Hmhco.com. 2012-11-08. Retrieved 2013-10-14.
  2. ↑ McIntyre, Michael K. (2014-10-17). "With publication of Webster's 'College 5' dictionary, the book that defined Cleveland editors' work is closed". The Plain Dealer. Retrieved 2014-10-19.
  3. ↑ Goldstein, Norm, editor, Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual, New York: Perseus Books, 1998, "dictionaries" entry, p 61

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