Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language [antikvár]

FOREWORD As this edition of Webster's New World- Dictionary is being prepared to go to press, the editors are systematically including in the plate proofs the death dates of recently deceased notables, new terms and senses resulting from the latest technological advancements, and such other changes and additions as last-minute developments make necessary. This final gesture in the interest of up-to-dateness is a rather symbolic one, a logical extension of the lexicographic principles that have guided the editors in the preparation of this work. For just as historical events and scientific concepts refuse to remain fixed, unyielding entities, so too a living language will not permit itself to be immutably pinned down. The excellent dictionaries of Dr. Johnson and Nathaniel Bailey, remarkable though they were in their days, have little more pertinence for the present-day reader of the New York Times than the alchemical writings of Roger Bacon have for a nuclear physicist. Not only could the earlier dictionaries have no knowledge of dilantin, snorkel, betatron, cortisone, ACTE, cybernetics, and vibraphone, but they would be of no help in uncovering the meanings of extrapolate, parking meter, iron curtain, cold war, simulcast, and hot-foot. Moreover, even those senses of words that have had continued currency from the time of Dr. Johnson to the present are in the earlier dictionaries defined in a language that falls strangely on 20th-century American ears. The 100 scholars, specialists, and editorial workers who compiled this dictionary set out to create a new work that would be built in the light of contemporary linguistics, psychology, and the allied sciences. Recognizing that modern lexicography is a disciplined science, they were, nevertheless, determined to avoid the dogmatism that led Ambrose Bierce to define a dictionary as "a malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic." This dictionary was not to create the impression that it was authoritarian, laying down the law about usage; it was to play, rather, the role of a friendly guide, pointing out the safe, well-travelled roads. Webster's New World Dictionary derives from the best traditions in British and American lexicography and is based especially on the broad foundations laid down for American dictionaries by Noah Webster. It is neither an abridgment nor a revision of some earlier work. It is a new dictionary in which every definition has been written afresh in the simplest language consistent with accuracy and fullness. The editors have tried to avoid wherever possible the "essence" type of definition, which merely states the class of things to which the thing being defined belongs and the differences that distinguish it from other members of this class. Instead, the reader is given the necessary additional connotative information, even if it means devoting a good deal of space to doing so (see, for example, the definitions of Aryan, blood, and epic). In choosing the words to be entered and defined, the editors used as their criterion the frequency of occurrence in contemporary American usage and in readings generally required of college and university students, insofar as it could be determined. As a result, this dictionary contains over 142,000 vocabulary entries, more than any other comparable American desk dictionary. All entries are arranged in a single alphabetical list, so that there is no need to leaf through numerous supplements and prefatory lists, as well as the dictionary proper, to find entries such as Isaiah, Charlemagne, Atlantic, John Bull, viz., F.O.B., OHG., a priori, and coup dc grace. In addition to the customary literary, scientific, and technical wordstock, the New World contains with a fullness unknown in previous general desk dictionaries colloquialisms and slang, the informal and vulgate words that are so rich and characteristic a feature of American English. Thus, along with the well-established entries, such as dead beat, double cross, flophouse, sob sister, and jerk, there are included a large number of widely used terms that have been overlooked by other dictionaries, such as fungo, cover girl, double take, big time, Hooper rating, hot rod, sixty-four dollar question, and whoops. Particular care has been devoted to the phrasal units and compounds whose meaning cannot be inferred from the definitions of the individual components (for example, act of God, black market, drive-in, hard up) and to the important idiomatic phrases that are such a vital part of English (see, for example, the lists after do, make, and run). Many abbreviations have been entered as well as words and phrases in other languages that one is likely to encounter in an English context. While retaining all such obsolete, archaic, and Scottish and British dialectal terms and senses as appeared justified, the editors have placed special emphasis on providing full treatment of the hundreds of important new terms and new senses of older terms that have come into both scientific