Vox Populi, Vox Webster

When he set out in 1746 to write the first great English dictionary. Samuel Johnson intended his definitions to be laws that would firmly establish meanings. But usage thumbs its nose at laws; the dictionary nowadays is more a Social Register of words than a Supreme Court of language. In the 27 years since the G. & C. Merriam Co. published the Second Edition of its unabridged Webster's New International Dictionary, thousands of new words have clamored to be listed. Last week, after investing $3,500,000 and 757 "editor-years," Merriam responded with a brand-new edition ($47.50 and up). It is the most radical version yet of the nation's most famous dictionary.

G. & C. Merriam Co. is the only direct descendant, corporately speaking, of Noah Webster,* who in 1828 produced the first truly American dictionary, which in its 70,000 listings stressed the New World's lusty new words, from applesauce to skunk. The descendants have never matched Noah's style, clarity and wit. He was a practical man given to phonetic spelling (ake, crum, skreen). He was a feeling man given to personalizing his definitions: "All sin is hateful in the sight of God and of good men." Or: "In short, we love whatever gives us pleasure and delight, whether animal or intellectual; and if our hearts are right, we love God above all things ..." The newest Webster's sacrifices all such eloquence for dry and technical accuracy.

Nonetheless, from A to zyzzogeton (a genus of South American leaf hoppers), Merriam-Webster's Third Edition is lighter and brighter than its immediate predecessor. It weighs 13½ v. 16½ Ibs., has 2,662 v. 3,194 pages, contains 450,000 v. 600,000 entries. Gone are the gazetteer, the biographical dictionary, and 100,000 obsolete or nonlexical terms, such as the names of characters in Dickens. In are 100,000 brand-new terms, from astronaut, beatnik, boo-boo, countdown, den mother and drip-dry, to footsie, hard sell, mccarthyism, no-show, schlemiel, sit-in, wage dividend and zip gun.

That Old Sprachgefühl. The result may pain purists, who will even find four-letter words ("usu. considered vulgar") in the new lexicon. They appear now because the most cultured (urbane, polished) Americans are used to earthier speech in fiction and drama. According to Merriam-Webster, even ain't is "used orally in most parts of the U.S. by many cultivated speakers." Nor could the editors fail to dig cool cats who make stacked chicks flip. Without drips and pads and junkies, who bug victims for bread to buy horse for a fix, the dictionary of 1961 would not be finalized.

Yet wordwise, science by far outdoes slang in supplying neologisms. Chemistry alone accounts for 17,000 words, culled from 250,000 new derivatives since 1934. Medicine yields the longest word, topping antidisestablishmentarianism (28 letters) with pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis (45), a lung disease afflicting miners. Conversely, one of the shortest words, set, requires the longest definition —more than a full page, which took one editor 6½ weeks to write.