The International Dictionary

NOAH WEBSTER might frown if he could read the title-page of the last edition of his American Dictionary. To be “ international ” was the very thing he wished to avoid; for he held that the English tongue as spoken in America was a legitimate development of seventeenth-century English, and as rightly entitled to be reckoned a standard as the form which the language had assumed under different forces in its older home. Successive editors have eliminated most of the provincial element in his original work. In the Unabridged of 1884 all his innovations in spelling, except the few which have commended themselves to the public, like the terminal or instead of our in Latin words received through the French, were rejected. The pronunciations did not differ from those of his rival, Worcester, except in a few instances where the first and second of two alternatives were reversed. His etymologies had disappeared, with the exception of a few lucky guesses. Now his distinctive feature of Americanism is repudiated on the title-page.

Nevertheless, the International of 1890 is in the line of development from the American Dictionary of the English Language of 1827, and invites comparison with the form immediately preceding it, the Unabridged of 1884, rather than with the absolute or ideal dictionary. Webster’s dictionaries have, too, a character of their own. They are not simply the scholar’s nor even the literary man’s handbooks. They are the student’s dictionaries, and besides are found in all printing and newspaper offices, — especially in the smaller ones, — and in thousands of households which possess no other book of an encyclopaedic character. The International makes a great advance along the lines characteristic of the Webster dictionary, though it may be questioned if the advance is as great as might have been expected, in view of the increase in breadth and accuracy of scholarship during the last twenty-five years, — the Unabridged really dates from 1864, — and of the stores of linguistic material that an unceasing and minute study of words has put at the disposal of modern revisers.

For the new dictionary, the preliminary article on the pronunciation of the English language has been entirely rewritten and much extended. It occupies twelve additional pages, and presents the results of modern phonetics systematically and compactly. It would make an admirable textbook, for it is characterized as well by common sense as by mastery of the subject. The list of words differently pronounced by different authorities contains about two hundred new cases. It contains, too, a much larger proportion of every-day words, and is evidently the result of an exhaustive comparison. Perry, Knowles, and Cooley are omitted from the collaterally compared authorities; Cull is placed by his modern representative, the Imperial; and Stormonth and the Encyclopædic are added. It is worth noticing that the Englishmen differ from each other quite as frequently as they do from the Americans. The International is easy to consult on questions of orthoepy, for every word presenting any difficulties has been respelled. This is in addition to the full diacritical marking, and renders the pronunciation evident at a glance even to one not thoroughly familiar with the symbols.

English orthography resists scientific treatment very stubbornly. The spelling of a word rests on definite usage which is exactly recorded. A change in pronunciation comes by imperceptible growth, and does not make itself perceived until it is well established, and then it is passed on by a body which can agree to conventions ; but the introduction or dropping of a single letter is, in the eyes of proof-readers, “gross, palpable, and mountainous.” Furthermore, a decided change in pronunciation does not at all necessitate a change in spelling, for the English written language is largely logographic. Words are represented by combinations from twenty-four characters, whereas forty would not be too many to represent all the elementary sounds. We read words as wholes, and there is a very slight bond between the component letters and the spoken syllables. It would be easier to introduce the metric system than a few desirable simplifications in spelling. It would have been pleasant to find, for instance, that the International gave rime precedence to that etymological conglomerate rhyme; but it could not properly do so, for a dictionary is simply a register of facts, and experience has proved that any one can do little towards promoting orthoepic changes, and, further, that it ought not to try to do so. Recognizing its true function, the new edition tabulates with absolute fidelity American spelling as it is, and not as some people think it ought to be.

A full list of words spelled in more than one way is given, but no authorities are cited. A comparative list of different spellings from American and English dictionaries would be instructive, and would show that, where American usage differs from English, historic precedent and logical analogy are quite as often followed here as in England.

As might be expected, the greatest improvement is evident in the etymologies. Dr. Mahn’s work in the edition of 1864 represented the philological science of that date. The International embodies the results of modern research in derivations, and corrects most of the errors of its predecessors. Pie is no longer referred to pastry by a desperate guess, — which, if carried out, would connect all words beginning with the same letter and having similar significations, — but is credited to its origin in a Celtic kitchen-word. The Unabridged had rejected the crude notion that God was somehow related to the word good; but the International goes further, and shows the true origin of the Teutonic God in a root meaning “that which is to be feared or propitiated.”Surly, which the Unabridged derives from sour-like, is now explained, rather grudgingly, to come from sirlike, or lordly, — an etymology thoroughly sustained by the middle English spelling, and by the fact that the word never was an adverb. Surround is no longer said to come from sur and round, but from superandare, to overflow. The curious fact that since the seventeenth century this word has taken up the meaning “ encompass,” and has thereby driven the genuine word round out of the language and stolen its office, is not alluded to. Slughorn is correctly defined to be sloggorne, a corruption of slogan, and not a horn at all; but Chatterton’s amusing mistake, “ Some caught a sloggorne and an onset wound,” and Browning’s, “ Dauntless I set the slughorn to my lips and blew,” are not cited, though they are the only authorities for the word. Cock, a male bird, is given as of “ Anglo-Saxon etymology, of unknown origin.” Skeat shows that, in all probability, it was taken into Anglo-Saxon from Latin, since the Teutonic form hana is used in manuscript Gospels written before 1100.

The superiority of the new edition is very evident in its treatment of the adjective fast. It gives in forty-one lines eight meanings and four illustrative quotations. The Unabridged has twentysix lines, six meanings, and three quotations. The two new ones, “ fast colors ” and “ fast flowers of their smells,” explain themselves, and one is obsolete. But in the International the double root of the word in Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian, through which it obtained two such different meanings as " firm " and “ rapid,” is well brought out. This is entirely ignored in the Unabridged. Neither under harbor nor cold can be found, in either book, an allusion to Cold Harbor, an inn where shelter could be obtained, but no food, though the phrase has given a name to several towns. In the Unabridged the expression a “ chopping sea” is only indirectly referred to the old verb chop, to bargain, and to “ chop logic ” is not cited. In the International a “chopping sea” is derived directly from chop, to bargain, or demand and offer alternately, and to “ chop logic ” is brought under the same head, though defined as meaning to argue sophistically, instead of to take turns in reasoning on one side or the other. The Unabridged gives, with rather an apologetic air, it is true, the ridiculous derivation of Amazon from a privative and μαζóѕ, the breast. Its successor is discreetly silent on this derivation. Upstart is still referred, with conservative and probably sound judgment, to up and start. But the radical meaning of start is sudden motion from a state of rest, whereas an upstart is one who has risen and is offensively conscious of merit. Skeat suggests that upstart may be from up and steort, a tail, the same word seen in the name of the bird redstart, and in stark naked. This would be a forcible folk-metaphor; but as it is not based on much documentary evidence, the revisers exercise good judgment in excluding it, though it might safely have been admitted as an alternative. Tickler is defined as “a book containing a memorandum of notes and debts arranged in the order of their maturity.” This is the banker’s use of the word, but it is sometimes extended to mean any private book of informal charges. It seems highly probable that it is connected with ticket, a memorandum charge, from which comes the old slang word tick, or credit. This etymology is not accepted, as the l cannot be accounted for, unless ticketer was influenced in sound by the word tickle. Tickler is certainly not “ commercial cant,” but is a technical word in good standing; much better than is tick, upon whose character no imputation is cast.

The noun upspring is defined “ upstart,” as if it were compounded of up and spring, and the passage is cited where Hamlet, speaking of his uncle, says : —

Upspring is the name of a dance, the German hupauf, translated “upspring” by Chapman. Hamlet in effect says “ he reels through the swaying dance,” and is speaking quietly and explaining facts. It would have been out of character for him, at this period, to revile his uncle, though he reprobates drunkenness in general. The definition in the International is clearly wrong. The expression dog cheap is entered under cheap, where it properly belongs, instead of under dog, and is explained as an inversion of “good cheap,”instead of meaning as “ cheap as dog’s meat,”the origin suggested in the Unabridged. Skeat’s etymology is that the dog in dog cheap is the Scandinavian dag, meaning “ very, ’ as seen in the Swedish dag snail, extremely greedy, and dag lat, very idle. This is certainly worthy of mention as an alternative. Besides, “ good cheap ” does not mean “dog cheap.”

Of course a dictionary cannot record all the etymological conjectures that may commend themselves to individual judgments. Its function is to be a safe guide, and it should state the conclusions on which there is a professional consensus of opinion. This the International has done with perhaps an excess of caution, for philologists are very much afraid of each other, — probably with good reason. In some cases a word or two would have made the connection between the etymology and some of the derived meanings more evident to the student, but, on the whole, the derivations in the International are based on the accepted conclusion of modern philology. The amazing explanation in the Unabridged of the origin of haberdasher, from habt ihr das, herr ? must be regarded as an attempt on the part of the reviser to relieve his weariness by a mild etymological joke.

The treatment of the word companion may be taken as an illustration of the superiority of the new edition. In the old one it is given but eighteen lines, has only one definition, — the Shakespearean use is entirely overlooked, — and is illustrated by two citations and four instances of special usage. In the International it takes up thirty-one lines ; the meaning is arranged under four heads, and is explained by three citations and four idiomatic uses. Fellow, however, is treated as well in the old as in the new edition. Other words showing the same fullness of treatment are line, grass, — which has nearly a column more than it had, — telescope, high, and low. Love has twice as much space allotted to it as it had before, but the treatment is not more satisfactory. In both books, Platonic love and love in its absolute or mystic sense are not noticed. Indeed, throughout the International, the words which have a philosophic or ethical content are much less satisfactory than are the scientific words. Nearly every definition seems to have been rewritten, though traces of the old phrasing are still evident.

The question of inclusion is a very difficult one. The bounds of the English language are ill defined. At the bottom lies the great body of slang words, most of which are whimsical and temporary inventions, though a few, like crank and boom, are genuine folk-metaphors, and in time find their way into the language, despite all hostile lexicographic legislation. Foreign words are continually making incursions from France or Italy, and a few of them become permanent settlers. Some of the great body of disused words, sloughed off in every generation, retain a literary character which entitles them to a place in a dictionary. Scientific and technical words are now as numerous as all other classes ; there are sixty thousand zoölogical terms, and botanical words are as many as the trees, If not as the leaves. To draw the lines of inclusion for a working dictionary is a task demanding delicate judgment and training. No one man can estimate the value and character of every word. In each department much must be trusted to specialists, whose estimation of the importance of a word will very probably depend on its value in their own work. Again, the literary man, the word-epicure, delights in obsolete uses, and would emulate the Chinese, who retain in their wordbooks characters of which the meaning and pronunciation have been entirely forgotten. The Arab’s name for a dictionary means “ ocean,” a word which expresses very well the immensity of the great reservoir of words. The object of a dictionary-maker is to include all the central or literary vocabulary, and so to “round up” detachments from the foreign, the obsolete, the colloquial, and the scientific groups as will make it probable that the book will rarely be consulted in vain by one of the great body for whose use it is intended. The last revisers of Webster have shown excellent judgment in determining this question of inclusion. The day has gone by when it was worth while to define a word simply for the purpose of swelling the total. A working book must be kept within working size, and the vocabulary of the International is, if anything, larger than is necessary.

A brief examination of the Religio Medici shows that many of Sir Thomas Browne’s once-used words are omitted. This is entirely justifiable. Many more of the seventeenth - century Latinisms — Milton’s, for example — might have been cut out. They explain themselves to any one with a slight knowledge of Latin, if not from the context. They are not English words, and never were. In a list of some four hundred words used in a peculiar sense in the Bible and contemporary books, we have noted but six omissions. These are mortify, in the sense of kill; incomprehensible, in the sense of immense; savour, in the sense of think (sapere, to be wise) ; manner, in the sense of booty (manus, the hand) ; motion, in the sense of oral direction ; and overflown, in the sense of flooded. These are, it is true, obsolete and rare cases, but they do not differ from many of the included words of the same class : as occupy, to do business ; partaker, an accomplice ; scrabble, to scrawl on paper; tache, a latch or fastening ; underset, supported ; crudle for curdle ; glout for gloat; whisperer for informer; and departe, to separate, as in the marriage service, “ till death us departe,” unfortunately corrupted into “ till death us do part.” Parcelmeal in the sense of piecemeal is the only new entry.

Enabling as an adjective, seen in the phrase “ enabling act,” is omitted in both editions, though the old sense of the verb, to make strong, as in the phrase “to enable the heart,” is given. Rondel, a form of verse, is now included, but the definition of this word, as well as those of rondeau, ballade, and triolet, is very imperfect. They are definite structures, and can be easily described, as is shown in the case of the kindred word villanelle. Ballad, the root form of our Early English poetry, deserves more than four lines in a dictionary claiming encyclopædic features. Demonic is included, but a citation from Dowden or Symonds would have illustrated the force of the word better than the one given from Emerson. Phantomnation is shown the door, after masquerading for years in several dictionaries. It owed its creation to the fact that the phrase of Pope, “ the phantom nations of the dead,” was written “ the phantomnations of the dead.” This phantom word was gravely registered, under the impression that “ the dead ” were in the habit of “ phantomnizing,” and served, at least, to show that lexicographers copy from one another. Crank is admitted, with reason, for it is a legitimately derived word, and saves many a tedious paraphrase. Dude and boom are given ratings, too, and may deserve them. Boodle, however, is low slang, and no doubt will be as short-lived as have been many other euphemisms for bribe-money. It disfigures the columns of a dictionary or the mouth of a speaker. Is not the good taste of admitting soap in a similar use equally questionable ? Gate, quite generally used in the sense of five in tallying, and derived from the resemblance of four straight lines crossed at an angle by the fifth to a small gate, is much more respectable. This is not recognized, though it is a real word.

About ten per cent of the Shakespearean words used in a peculiar sense are omitted, all or most of which have strict analogues among those included. Among those left out are embossed, carve, ingener, jacks (the keys of a virginal), incorrect, handsaw (for hernshaw), abate, abroad, atomy, land-damn, hent, cobloaf, disease, captious, capricious, and about one hundred others of individual — not metaphorical — signification.

It might be said that most editions of the plays contain special glossaries, in which these uses are fully explained, but the great body of the words of this class is included, like upspring, before referred to. A curious fact, too, is that by far the greater part of these omissions occur among words beginning with the first letters of the alphabet.

In the difficult department of handicraft words and folk-words the International is strong. Many old semi-technical words which have a vigorous life among the people have not found their way into books. These are a valuable part of the living tongue, and should be registered, though they lie a little to one side of the well-worked field of the lexicographer. They are quite distinct from dialect words. Brash and dozy as applied to wood are in constant use. Brash is entered, but dozy is not, though its etymology could easily have been conjectured. Putlog and ledger, mason’s terms for parts of the scaffold, are given, the former for the first time. Hawk and darby are both included. Hawk is the small square board upon which mortar is carried. Conservatism and a fear of rival lexicographers prevent the revisers from suggesting a derivation from hawk, to carry about. The word nowel is defined as the bottom part of a mould or of a flask, and also as the core. It would be difficult to find a moulder who uses nowel in the sense of core. This definition seems to be due to a desire to connect the word with newel, seen in “ newel post,” which is from the Old French nual, a kernel, or stone of a fruit. The newel was first the central column in a winding stair, then the central post in an ornamental curve of the railing. The moulder’s word, nowel, is etymologically puzzling. If connected with noll, the head, it should mean the top of the mould, but this is called the cope. The nowel almost invariably contains the mould proper, and possibly the word originally did not carry the idea of head so much as of shell or casing, in which case a connection could be made with noyau, a nut.

Dr. Johnson said that “ the interpretation of a language by itself is very difficult, for there is no other word to express the idea, and simple ideas cannot be described.” Probably there is nothing harder than to define a word, even the name of a thing, for all words have color and associations. We learn the force of words by hearing them used in definite connections, not by having them explained to us. This is the reason why the chronologically arranged citations of the Philological Society’s dictionary are so satisfactory. The word seems to stand out almost like a living thing, so vivid becomes our apprehension of its etymological skeleton, its accretions of significance, its branches, its changes of fortune. No man can appreciate the different meanings of a word without a body of citations before him. There are more citations in the International than there were in the Unabridged, but there are still hardly enough. In a few cases they do not seem to illustrate the meaning under which they are given ; more often a self-explaining metaphorical use has been made one of the divisions of the definition.

Under bishop the following citation is made: “ It is a fact now generally recognized by theologians of all shades of opinion that in the language of the New Testament the same officer in the church is called indifferently ‘ bishop ’ (έπίσκοπѕ) and ‘ elder ‘ or ‘ presbyter.' ” This does not throw any light on the meaning of the word, and suggests a theologic subacidity out of place in a dictionary, if not in any modern book.

Credence table is put under credence, belief. There is no connection between the two words, as the first is very remotely related to credo, if at all. It comes either from greden, to prepare, or, more probably, from the Italian credencia, meaning a clipboard, which may possibly have some relation to credo. The etymology of jube, too, is well known. It comes from the words jube domine, just as dirge comes from dirige domine. Ecclesiastical words seem to have been regarded as bearing the mark of the beast.

Noah Webster was not a man of broad culture. He could write from Cambridge, England, “ The colleges are mostly old stone buildings, which look very dreary, cold, and gloomy to an American accustomed to the new public buildings of our country.” He did not approach the treatment of words from the literary side. It is too much to expect that a dictionary intended for the great body of the public should treat words as artistic material, and it is, perhaps, unavoidable that tradition should impart a certain wordy, woodeny, and dogmatic tone to successive editions of his book, even when greatly modified by descent; but we may fairly demand that a work which has grown so much in size should improve more than this has done in stylistic precision. The aura of Webster’s dictionaries, though scholarly, is unliterary ; perhaps necessarily so. Over them all is the strain of a labored attempt to reconcile the academic and the popular. At the same time, the International may be pronounced the best working dictionary and the cheapest book in the world. With it on the table one will rarely need to take the Dictionary of the Philological Society from the shelf; for a dictionary is opened one hundred times to determine a question of spelling or pronunciation, and once to look up the history of a word. For these every-day needs the International is admirably adapted.

Considering the peculiar functions of the International, it has no more valuable features than the special dictionaries at the end. With one exception those of the Unabridged are retained, as is Professor Hadley’s masterly monograph on the English language. The list of etymologies of geographical names is cut out. This is a dictinct loss. It was, no doubt, imperfect, especially in Indian etymologies, but surely an Indian scholar could have been found to revise it. The Pronouncing Gazetteer is especially useful. Some few omissions and errors have been pointed out in American Notes and Queries, the only serious one being the retention of Wheeling as the capital of West Virginia, instead of Charlestown. The Biographical Dictionary seems to have been faithfully revised, and contains about five hundred new names. In one column there are nineteen new insertions and fourteen corrections of dates. Deaths as late as 1889 are noted. The pronunciation of the name of the genial London novelist, Walter Besant, should, however, be accented to rhyme with “ pleasant,” not with “ his ant.” In the Dictionary of Noted Names in Fiction space has been so greatly utilized by condensation that thirty pages in the new dictionary are occupied instead of the forty-seven in the old one, though there are some one hundred new entries. The condensation has been judiciously done, though there is no reason why Bluebeard should still occupy several inches of space, when every primary - school boy knows his tragic story. But the inclusion of names is very arbitrary and imperfect. The admission to this list should have been determined by the question. Is a certain name likely to be alluded to in current literature? As it stands, Dickens, Shakespeare, Sterne, and Scott are well represented, but Thackeray is not. Becky Sharp has a place, but her counterfoil, Amelia Osborne, is absent. We find Pendennis, but no allusion to that typical figure, the old Major, nor to Blanche Amory, Foker, and Warrington. Colonel Newcome is included, but no other name of the family. “ If Sarah Battle is introduced, why should not Bridget Elia also be brought forward ? ” Why, too, should not the delightful Parson Wilbur accompany his friend Hosea Biglow ? Among the many fathers mentioned we miss “ Father Tom,” who “ made a hare of the Pope.” Buffalo Bill is included, for the benefit of coming generations, no doubt, but might have waited for his promotion. Dinadan and King Mark are not found in the list of Arthurian heroes, though the latter is as well entitled to notice as is Tristram. Under this last name some allusion should have been made to Tristram’s character as the first gentleman sportsman and inventor of the nomenclature of the chase, dear to the tongue of every true hunter. French literature is almost entirely neglected, though the names of classic French fiction are continually alluded to in current English literature, and are the very ones a student would be apt to seek in this list. He would find Quasimodo, but not Esmeralda, and would look in vain for most of Hugo’s and Balzac’s and Daudet’s characters.

Running hastily through the names without any check-list, the following omissions are noticeable, to all of which analogues are included : Madame Bovary, Eugénie Grandet, Lady Betty Modish, Haroun Al Raschid, Vittoria Corombona, Duchess of Malfi, Tom Cringle, Peter Simple, Numa Roumestan, Tartarin, Saladin, Anna Karénina, Lucile, Lothair, Pippa, Balaustion (and Browning’s names generally), Lorna Doone, Richard Feveril (and Meredith’s names generally), the Jew of Malta, Athos, Porthos, D’Artagnan, the Count of Monte Cristo, Bayard, Udolpho, O’Malley, Handy Andy, and many other equally well-known names. This lack is the more to be regretted as the list is of very great value to reading young people, and a few hours’ work with any good handbook would have completed it on some definite principle. It seems odd, too, to find John Company under “ Company, John, " as if “ Company ” were a surname.

The reference to Leigh Hunt as the “original” of Harold Skimpole is unjust to the memory of a gentle, industrious, pure-minded man of letters. The word “ original ” implies resemblance in essentials, and Skimpole is a cruel caricature. Perhaps he resembles Leigh Hunt as much as any one of Dickens’s characters resembles a human being.

Illustrations are a popular feature, but of very little real value in a dictionary, except to explain simple mechanical devices. They may assist one in forming an idea of the appearance of animals. The notion any one could gain from them of a complicated piece of machinery, the sugar mill, for example, would probably be as definite as that of Mr. Kinglake’s Turk, who described cotton mills, locomotives, and printing presses by waving his hands and saying vaguely, “ Whiz, whiz, all by steam ; whir, whir, all by wheels! ” Illustrations belong to an encyclopædia where things, not words, are explained. It seems strange, however, not to find in so well printed a book an illustration of a printing press. Botany and conchology are well presented. In particular, the page of illustrations of grasses is likely to be useful.

The strictures we have made on the International Dictionary refer to surface matters only, and opinion about them may very likely depend on what a reader considers a language to be. In essentials it is a credit to the publishers, to the editors, and to American scholarship.