Talk:Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary

Additional comments

In revising this article, I refrained from remarks which might seem opinionated or judgmental, and thus out of place in an encyclopedia. I will use this format for such commentary, as it is informative in important ways that the article is not.

The American College Dictionary (1947), the first Random House dictionary and the basis of the Random House Dictionary, was almost entirely a condensed reformatting of the Century abridgment, The New Century Dictionary (1927), with most of the quotations removed, the etymologies trimmed, illustrations reduced, and appendices slashed. So, apart from the addition of a small percentage of new words, the ACD was an abridgment of the abridgment of the Century Dictionary. Far superior, in my estimation, the New Century was still in print for more than another decade after the ACD was published; yet the ACD was a highly praised "new" dictionary.

The 1st edition of the Random House Dictionary (1966) was actually this college dictionary with gratuitous numbers of proper names added as main entries. This included names of towns and cities of only a few thousand people, institutions, books, kings, etc., and given names: even Jim and Jimmie offered as separate entries and defined as "a boy's given name, form of James," etc. So, it was rather audacious of Random House to call their new dictionary "unabridged", arriving on the heels of Webster's Third (1961) which covered more than three times the number of lexical (ie, generic rather than proper name) entries. RH employed numerous methods of puffing up the book to "unabridged" demensions: larger page and print, thicker paper, and heavier binding. It worked.

The 2nd edition of the RHD (1987) considerably increased the vocabulary over the 1st, although it was still only about half that of Webster's Third. I don't pretend to know how this revision was created, but a comparison with the World Book Dictionary (1963, 1976 rev.) reveals that, apart from newer words, the word lists of the two dictionaries are almost identical, and the definitions in the RHD appear to be slight paraphrases of those in the WBD. Perhaps RHD merely used the same word selection method, but it doesn't seem as if the expansion of the dictionary was as arduous as it might have been.

As i described in the article RHD 2nd edition applied a different method of dating words from that of the originator of the practice, Merriam-Webster in their 1983 Collegiate 9th edition. Quoting myself from the article, "where the Collegiate gave 1676, Random House might offer, 1670-80". Ostensibly, RH was offering a reasonable estimate, as there is no way to pinpoint the actual first use of a word. But how did they arrive at the estimates ? Consider: Either you have a citation or you don't. If you have one, what is the purpose of an estimate ? You might reason that if there is a citation, the actual first appearance might have been a few years earlier. That would explain the earlier date, but why the later date ? Might the word have originated later than the citation ?

Then comes the adoption by Random House of the name Webster's in addition to their own. Was not Random House enough of a recognizable and respected name, one which distinguished their dictionaries from others ? What would people think if they saw an American Heritage Webster's ? An attempt to gouge some extra market share, it was yet another free ride, symbolizing well RH's derivative and disingenuous method of producing and marketing dictionaries.

My conclusion is that The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged, aka The Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, is not all it's cracked up to be. Labelling it "unabridged" is a corruption of the connotation the word has had for over 140 years to represent dictionaries that are in the class of the most comprehensive of a given time. Further, from its conception, it has been derivative of the previous work of others rather than exhaustive original research, making it relatively easy to produce. Even when they adopted another dictionary's innovation (ie, the entry dates) they applied it poorly.

I'm not saying it isn't a useful dictionary. As a large one volume reference, handy for including plentiful proper names in its alphabetical listing, it may be a dictionary that satisfies many people, especially those who aren't concerned about the fine details. My objection is that it has gleaned honors it doesn't deserve. - ERL 216.19.218.36 23:11, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The best American English dictionary

RHU is the best dictionary of American English. Its usage notes are 100% accurate, making sound judgments on thorny linguistic issues. This is especially true of its discrimination between formal and informal, standard and nonstandard.

This has been stated in many newspaper reviews, which are conspicuously absent from this article. When writers with an agenda contribute to Wikipedia, it's not their viewpoint that wins; it's Wikipedia that loses. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 201.252.197.122 (talk) 02:32, 6 January 2007 (UTC).