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Headed by scholarly Philip B. Gove. 59, a onetime English teacher at New York University, Merriam-Webster's Ph.D.-proud editors toil in a Georgian edifice in Springfield, Mass., that looks more like a college library than a company HQ. They began collecting a new batch of commonly used words before their last edition came out (complete with a misspelling—Brünnehilde for
Brünnhilde—that competitors ignorantly cribbed). They used a worldwide network of "word watchers"—avid amateurs with Sprachgefühl (feeling for speech), who constantly peruse novels, menus, labels, ticket stubs, and even small-town news paper accounts of obscure murders. The head of Merriam's own shipping department, for example, is the part-time scholar who netted piggyback, as used in railroad freight hauling.
Indestructible Bones. Whenever word watchers spotted a new usage, editors filled out a "citation slip"—6,200,000 in all—to record its frequency and nuances. Words that got enough "cits" (pronounced sites) were discussed with 'Merriam's 200 outside consultants, who cover every field, from Knots and Logic. Mosses and Liverworts, to Cocktails and Girl Guiding. Their expert opinion clarified each new definition.
The most conspicuous change in the Third New International Dictionary is that every definition is really new. Instead of thumbnail essays, they run to single phrases. To illustrate new shades of meaning, they include 200,000 quotations that draw on sources as diverse as Variety, Lingerie Merchandising, and TIME (probably the most frequently quoted magazine), along with "pungent, lively remarks" by 14,000 modern notables from Winston Churchill to Mickey Spillane. The old edition brushed off goof as "a ridiculous, stupid person." Now. in amplification, Dwight Eisenhower is quoted as complaining that someone "made a goof." Elizabeth Taylor broadens sick by speaking of "a room smelling rather of sick." Ethel Merman says, "Two shows a day drain a girl," and Willie Mays warns, "Hit too many homers and people start puffing you up."
Says Editor Gove: "The English language is not a system of logic. What we start with is an inchoate heterogeneous agglomerate that retains the indestructible bones of innumerable tries at orderly communication." In short, writing dictionaries ain't easy.
* His heirs sold the rights to Printers George and Charles Merriam of Springfield, Mass., but the Merriams failed to get sole right to Webster's name, which is now in the public domain —hence the modern multiplicity of "Webster's" dictionaries.