technicat reviewed The Dictionary Wars by Peter Martin
Surprisingly fun account of dictionary authors complaining about each other with hurt feelings.
4 stars
It's not one of the more scintillating rivalries, with legendary wordsmiths essaying lengthy accusations and protestations often anonymously in sensationalist newspapers (some things never change), but if you have any interest in dictionaries or even just wondered what happened to all the English u's (it's a hassle with open source code, American programmers must suffer entrenched variables named "colour"), this book explains how the Quixote-like Webster (yes, that Webster) tried to define a distinctly American English and the dictionary disputes that ensued. It also explains how Merriam of Merriam-Webster got into the act (and how in a rivalry of ideologies it's still the unscrupulous business people who win), what's with all the Webster dictionaries without the Webster name (it's public domain now, go ahead, write a dictionary and call it Webster's), and leaves us lamenting the forgotten fame of word wizard Worcester (still rememberd as a sauce, oops that's Worcestershire, …
It's not one of the more scintillating rivalries, with legendary wordsmiths essaying lengthy accusations and protestations often anonymously in sensationalist newspapers (some things never change), but if you have any interest in dictionaries or even just wondered what happened to all the English u's (it's a hassle with open source code, American programmers must suffer entrenched variables named "colour"), this book explains how the Quixote-like Webster (yes, that Webster) tried to define a distinctly American English and the dictionary disputes that ensued. It also explains how Merriam of Merriam-Webster got into the act (and how in a rivalry of ideologies it's still the unscrupulous business people who win), what's with all the Webster dictionaries without the Webster name (it's public domain now, go ahead, write a dictionary and call it Webster's), and leaves us lamenting the forgotten fame of word wizard Worcester (still rememberd as a sauce, oops that's Worcestershire, and a Boston-area T stop). But Americans were the winners with a heightened interest in (now) their language and a stream of dictionaries since then (alas, the lengthy list in the appendix does not include Wiktionary). I'm kind of curious whether any of this affected the development of dictionaries in other languages, too.