Webster's New World Dictionary
Encyclopedia
Dictionary
A dictionary is a collection of words in one or more specific languages, often listed alphabetically, with usage information, definitions, etymologies, phonetics, pronunciations, and other information; or a book of words in one language with their equivalents in another, also known as a lexicon...
first published in 1951 and currently published by John Wiley & Sons
John Wiley & Sons
John Wiley & Sons, Inc., also referred to as Wiley, is a global publishing company that specializes in academic publishing and markets its products to professionals and consumers, students and instructors in higher education, and researchers and practitioners in scientific, technical, medical, and...
.
The first edition was published by the World Publishing Company of Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The city is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately west of the Pennsylvania border...
, 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 1998 and contains 160,000 entries.
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
Pearson PLC
Pearson plc is a global media and education company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is both the largest education company and the largest book publisher in the world, with consumer imprints including Penguin, Dorling Kindersley and Ladybird...
bought the reference division of Simon & Schuster in 1998 and sold it to IDG Books
IDG
International Data Group is a technology media, research, event management, and venture capital organization.IDG evolved from International Data Corporation which was formed in 1964 in Newtonville, Massachusetts, by Patrick Joseph McGovern and a friend, Fred Kirch...
in 1999. John Wiley & Sons
John Wiley & Sons
John Wiley & Sons, Inc., also referred to as Wiley, is a global publishing company that specializes in academic publishing and markets its products to professionals and consumers, students and instructors in higher education, and researchers and practitioners in scientific, technical, medical, and...
acquired IDG Books (renamed Hungry Minds) in 2001. The college edition is the official desk dictionary of the Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
and The New York Times.
Although the title refers to Noah Webster
Noah Webster
Noah Webster was an American educator, lexicographer, textbook pioneer, English spelling reformer, political writer, editor, and prolific author...
, the work is unrelated to the series of Webster's
Webster's Dictionary
Webster's Dictionary refers to the line of dictionaries first developed by Noah Webster in the early 19th century, and also to numerous unrelated dictionaries that added Webster's name just to share his prestige. The term is a genericized trademark in the U.S.A...
dictionaries published by the Merriam-Webster
Merriam-Webster
Merriam–Webster, which was originally the G. & C. Merriam Company of Springfield, Massachusetts, is an American company that publishes reference books, especially dictionaries that are descendants of Noah Webster’s An American Dictionary of the English Language .Merriam-Webster Inc. has been a...
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
Random House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...
's line of Webster's Dictionaries.
Webster's New World student and children's dictionaries are of particular interest to young readers.
See also
- Webster's DictionaryWebster's DictionaryWebster's Dictionary refers to the line of dictionaries first developed by Noah Webster in the early 19th century, and also to numerous unrelated dictionaries that added Webster's name just to share his prestige. The term is a genericized trademark in the U.S.A...
(dealing primarily with the line now published by Merriam-Webster)