Webster's Third; or, the viral impact of Phillip Gove
- Phillip B. Gove
- Results of Webster's (or, rather, Gove's) Third International edition
- Effects in the dictionary world
- Effects throughout civilization
Part 1: Enter Webster, Enter Merriam
Noah Webster and beginnings
The saga of the Webster line of dictionaries starts with “the Father of American Scholarship and Education.” Noah Webster is one of the lesser discussed activists of the Revolutionary Era but has had a large impact on the country’s culture.
Born Oct. 16, 1758 in West Hartford, Connecticut, Noah Webster was passionate about learning from birth. He excelled in schooling and, at the age of 16, was sent with the blessing of his parents to attend Yale University. Starting his education in 1774, Webster’s undergraduate career was interrupted by the Revolutionary War when he volunteered for duty and served under his father. He completed his education in 1778 and began focusing on his professional future. According to Encyclopedia Britannica’s entry on Webster, he taught and studied law until obtaining his law degree and passing the New York bar in 1781.
The impact of the Institute on Webster defined part of his character as a writer. Due to absent or immature copyright laws throughout the country, the lawyer/teacher/writer was forced to travel often and lobby aggressively to protect the ownership of his works from various plagiarists. Webster’s experience defending his books imbued in him a tenacity which would continue into his first dictionary.
Noah Webster’s greatest success would turn out to be his dictionary. First published in 1828, Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language was a revolutionary work. Having spent years researching the English language, searching out sources for words and learning new languages in order to most accurately define entries, Webster’s dictionary established the lexicographer as the authority on the English language.
Controversy was ever present in Webster’s publications. His first text, The American Spelling Book, was based on Thomas Dilworth’s New Guide to the English Tongue. While he made no attempts to conceal it (and, in fact, discussed the similarities openly), Webster’s American Dictionary was largely based on Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language. According to David Micklethwait’s comprehensive Noah Webster and the American Dictionary: “Webster loudly proclaimed what was wrong with Dilworth and Johnson [in his prefaces] so that the reader would not notice how much of their work he had quietly appropriated” (10). The American Dictionary contained nearly 40,000 entries previously unrecorded in a dictionary but sold very poorly due to a whopping $20 price tag. It took more than 13 years for the initial 2,500 copy run to sell out (M-W Online legacy.html). It was even less successful in a revision circa 1841 (Britannica).
Webster’s goal through all of this was to replace (British) English texts with American-written ones. He focused heavily on building pronunciations off of American usages, and so founded one of the principal character traits of the Webster dictionary line. Further, as stated by Edward B. Jenkins, “Noah Webster compiled the first genuine American dictionary, which was also basically prescriptive in nature. The emphasis in Webster, however, was placed upon the reform of spelling” (185).
George & Charles Merriam establish the tradition
The copyrights to Noah Webster’s name were purchased by a pair of Massachusetts printers, George and Charles Merriam, in 1843. The Brothers Merriam secured the rights in the wake of the unsuccessful 1841 revision with the intent of improving the manual and establishing it as the American dictionary.
Founded in 1831 as the G. & C. Merriam Company, the Merriam publishing house was the breath of life Webster’s dictionary needed to root itself in the heart of American lexicography. Upon securing the rights to Webster’s dictionary, the brothers hired Webster’s son-in-law, Chauncey Goodrich, to oversee the necessary revisions to the 1841 publication. Noah Webster’s son William also worked as an editor of the revised work (M-W Online legacy.html).
Four years later, the 1847 edition, called An American Dictionary of the English Language (New Revised Edition) sold abundantly better than Noah Webster’s original reference. According to Merriam-Webster’s corporate Web site, the Webster estate initially doubted G. & C.’s decision to sell the new dictionary at only six dollars. In the 25 years the tome ran in print, however, the family collected more than $250,000 in royalties, which fairly satiated the heirs’ clamor (legacy.html). The first Merriam-Webster dictionary met quite wider success than its predecessors, taking orders to put a dictionary in every school in Massachusetts and 10,000 copies for New York State’s school districts. It eventually would permeate across the country and become standard writ in the American school (legacy.html).
The tradition of the Merriam-Webster dictionary
Noah Webster’s motivations to write his first major dictionary were two-fold. As a patriot he wanted to break the American schooling system from the use of British texts. On top of that, Webster wanted to establish the pronunciation of the American dialect. This second reason set the Webster series apart from earlier dictionaries. Webster spent many years cataloging the way English speakers in the fledgling United States used their words in order to present them in his dictionary. Through the 200-plus years since he started his work, the Merriam-Webster dictionary has established itself as a controversially progressive text for pronunciation and usage. This tradition continues today, hallmarked by the Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, which the company calls “Merriam-Webster’s flagship achievement” (timeline800px.gif). To fully understand the effect on the world Webster’s Third has had, one must discuss its editor, Philip B. Gove.
Part 2: The Lexicographical World Shudders
The Merriam Company published the second edition to Webster’s New International Dictionary in 1934. This tome of work was the capstone to a bit more than a century’s work and established Webster’s as the authority on usage, spelling and pronunciation in the United States (Finegan 116). Riding the universal success of the dictionary, the publisher set out to reach the next summit—the unabridged dictionary. After an investment of more than 3.5 million dollars and 27 years of research, Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged was released. It garnered a response surprising to both the publisher and the global community. In the end, it was considered the responsibility of Philip Babcock Gove.
Philip B. Gove
Philip Babcock Gove was born in Concord, New Hampshire in 1902. He was schooled at Dartmouth, Harvard and Columbia, achieving a Ph. D. in 1941 at the age of 39 and a Litt.D. in 1963. His career with G. & C. Merriam Co. began in 1946 as an asst. editor before climbing to managing editor in ’51, general editor in ’52 and editor in chief in ’61. He stepped back from EIC in 1967 to the position of editorial consultant before retiring on July 1, 1972. He died two and a half months later (Woolf 163).
The substance of Mr. Gove was not in his résumé; it was in the focus and principle by which he managed Webster’s Third. Throughout the publication cycle and in the aftermath of the release, Gove was steadfast in his resolve to defend the dictionary’s progressive posturing. An example of the debate is shown in Webster’s Third’s treatment of the word “ain’t.” Stanley Kutler recounts the argument over the word in this fashion: “One particularly charged argument was over Webster's entry for “ain't.” Critics claimed that Webster's Third sanctioned its use. Gove countered that the entry reflected the way people really talked” (Kutler). Gove upheld the spirit of Noah Webster when he took on the Third. Their shared vision was that a dictionary should not be prescriptive of the language but descriptive, recording and cataloging rather than teaching.
To that point, most dictionary producers upheld the notion that the dictionary was the law on language. What was stated in the dictionary was fact and should be followed absolutely. To misuse or to pronounce a word other than as prescribed in the tome was a fault. Webster, the Merriams and Gove all believed that a dictionary should describe the current use of a word, its history of usage, and the catalog of its pronunciations. Webster’s Third is a testament to the philosophy of English as a living language and was distilled into a more focused piece: from it was removed most encyclopedic material and into it was established the status as a dictionary of the standard language (Morton 62).
What occurred with the publication of Webster’s Third was a backlash of indignation and disgust at the permissiveness and liberty taken in editing the new edition. The first complaint regarded the omission of content from the second edition. In early discussions in 1951, the dictionary’s editorial board determined that to include the thousands of new words the Third would need, an equal amount of material would need to be removed. This was because the second edition had met the physical limits of a one-volume dictionary (Morton 59-60). To update the dictionary to modern standards it was necessary to strike nearly three hundred pages of text from the second edition. The decision to omit and the way it was handled created a controversy that is still discussed today.
Results of Webster’s (or, rather, Gove’s) Third International edition
The decision to drastically change the dictionary was not made lightly. Stolid opposition to the reduction of “non-lexical” information was present from the beginning of the debate. Concern existed within the halls of Merriam Company over backlash from the public to a loss of crucial material. Ultimately it was decided that the dictionary had to change philosophy—no longer could it be both dictionary and encyclopedia, it needed to be dictionary alone (Finegan 117).
While the change was competent and necessary, Gove mishandled the publicity of the benefits to the dictionary and general reader. His largest failure was refraining from explaining the decision in detail. While he published statements in scholarly journals and touched the subject in the Third’s preface (Finegan 117, Morton 65), it was far too little, too late. Herbert Morton cites a passage from the dictionary’s preface as support for this conclusion:
“The demands for space have made necessary a fresh judgment on the claims of many parts of the old vocabulary. The dictionary is the result of a highly selective process in which discarding material of insubstantive or evanescent quality has gone hand in hand with adding terms that have obtained a place in the language. It confines itself strictly to generic words and their functions, sounds, and meanings as distinguished from proper names that are not generic. Selection is guided by usefulness.”
This is the discussion, in total, was all that was offered by Gove to the readers of Webster’s Third as to the dramatic change in content. He did not digress into detailed reasons for certain content types’ omissions. He did not offer explanation for the new words, including the now famous “ain’t,” nor did he expound on his omission of the comment tags which previously had been used to denote outdated or undesired spellings, usages and pronunciations (Battistella).
Part 3: Pebbles & Ripples
Effects in the dictionary world
The tremors of Webster’s Third were felt throughout the country. From Time to The Washington Post, culturists and academics fervently discussed the successes and slaughtering of the dictionary. According to Paul Faris’ article on Webster’s Third and American Heritage in College English, The New Yorker went so far as to devote 20 columns to its attack on the revolutionary dictionary. Perhaps the strangest reaction came from a competing publisher.
The American Heritage Publishing co. was “appalled by the permissiveness” of Gove’s dictionary. It’s president, James Parton, attempted to purchase a controlling share of stock in Merriam Publishing in order to pull what must have seemed to be Gove’s tribute to Frankenstein’s Monster off of the market. Faris quotes Parton as having made the move because Merriam was “badly in need of guidance.” AHP was prepared to re-publish Webster’s Second until their own board could release a fourth edition. Though AHP was essentially laughed out of Merriam’s head office, it was evident that the book revolted a large number of academics and linguistics alike. The idea that a dictionary should catalogue language rather than define it was absurd to most of Gove’s contemporaries.
Effects throughout civilization
The tidal wave didn’t stop with publishing houses and les magazines de coture. The Third Edition reached beyond the halls of academia and into the daily lives of the entire global community. It has affected multinational corporations: MCI cited the definition for “modify” from Webster’s Third in a Supreme Court case to dissent the usage of the word pressed by Justice Antonio Scalia (it offered a progressive definition MCI needed) (Safire). It has affected presidents: former President Richard Nixon’s lawyers cited Webster’s progressive definition of the term “try” (v: to subject to something that tests the powers of endurance) as reason to decertify the impeachment trials of the statesman (Nixon v. United States) on grounds of badgering and undue harassment.
Though consistently badgered by the academic world, the dictionary was loved by the public. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, the most popular of the Merriam-Webster line, is the fourth best-selling dictionary on Amazon.com. While it is led by The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language in both third and fourth edition, the MWCD leads in most specific (medical reference, science reference) reference book categories. The population was appreciative of the fact that there was finally a dictionary that represented the language as they used it.
The precedent taken by the dictionary is progressive and descriptive. Gove determined to follow the tradition of Webster and the Brothers Merriam in establishing Webster’s Third as the definitive dictionary for the modern age. And though his execution of the changes from second to third was ill-advertised and stricken with controversy, the dictionary continues to be the first stop for the lexical inquiry of layperson and professional alike.
Bibliography
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- Battistella, Edwin L. Bad Language: Are Some Words Better Than Others? Oxford University Press US, 2005.
- Britannica Online Encyclopedia. "Noah Webster." http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9076399/Noah-Webster
- Faris, Paul. “Two Views of English Usage: Webster’s Third and The American Heritage Panel.” College English, Vol. 31, No. 8 (May, 1970), p. 836.
Finegan, Edward. Attitudes Toward English Usage: The History of a War of Words. New York: Teachers College Press, 1980. - Hartmann, R. R. K. Lexicography. Routledge, 2003: 164-165.
Jenkinson, Edward B. What is Language?: And Other Teaching Units for Grades Seven Through Twelve. Indiana University Press, 1967: 185-187. - Kutler, Stanley I. et. al. Dictionary of American History, 3rd Ed. Charles Scribner's Sons, 2003.
- Lepore, Jill. “Noah's Ark.” The New Yorker 6 Nov. 2006: 78.
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- Newman, Andrew A. “Wordsmiths: They Also Serve Who Only Vote on 'Ain't,'” The New York Times. 23 Dec. 2006.
- Nixon v. United States (91-740), 506 U.S. 224 (1993).
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/91-740.ZO.html - "Noah Webster - People of Connecticut". Netstate.com. Accessed on-line 25 Feb. 2008.
http://www.netstate.com/states/peop/people/ct_nw.htm - Safire, William. “On Language; Scalia v. Merriam-Webster.” The New York Times Magazine. 20 Nov. 1994.
- “Surveying The,” Time Magazine. 02 Nov. 1987, accessed on-line 11 Feb. 2008. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,965885,00.html
- “Vox Populi, Vox Webster,” Time Magazine. 6 Oct. 1961, accessed on-line 11 Feb. 2008. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,827802,00.html
- Woolf, Henry Bosley. "Philip Babcock Gove, 27 June 1902-16 November 1973." American Speech. 45.3/4 (1970): 163-167.
