Webster's New American Dictionary [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION This Dictionary is named Webstek's New American"Dictionakt for definite and practical reasons. In a most highly developed field of dictionary publishing, basic items of form—such as the treatment of definitions, spelling, and compounding—^have been standardized and ably presented to the American public in many editions and under numerous titles. These standardized components of dictionary making resist arbitrary change and defy revolution. No publisher or lexicographer may take liberties with them, for they must root, grow, or change by one, and only one, great law—the highly democratic Law of Usage. Throughout the world, wherever English is spoken or written, the law of usage is absolute. The United States and England provide the lexicographers for the English-speaking world. On both sides of the Atlantic the law of usage has demanded certain differences in minor phases of European and American English. Fortunately for both of these two greatest of English-speaking peoples, the range of difference in their forms of writing their common language has narrowed to a point where it may truly be said that the remaining distinctions are largely without differences. In spealdng there exists a wider bridge, but what with the radio and travel working at fusion, even this difference is melting away. And while Americans inevitably gravitate toward British and Canadian pronunciation, these latter have come a long way into the field of America's vital English in the matter of the written word. So there is fair exchange, and the good work continues. One day, perhaps at no remote date, there may be only one standard of English, and one common tyi)e of dictionary for both countries. Meantime, in Webster's New American Dictionary, the spelling, the pronunciation, the definitions, the fundamentals generally and severally, are in accord with the law of usage. The Method, the Accessibility, the Practicability, features in Webster's New American Dictionary, however, are new^—and are "New American." There is a tempo in American activities. Right or wrong, commendable or not, that tempo is; and it is impatient, impulsive, in some respects even somewhat intolerant. Applied to the use of a dictionary, it demands (1) accuracy and reliability; (2) practical adequacy; (3) Simplicity; (4) time-saving, with essentials first and details restricted to general usefulness. The average American is "going somewhere," doing something else, when he consults his dictionary. And if perchance he be a pedant, and perhaps not average, he is nevertheless American, and will, therefore, we trust, appreciate the convenience of this time- and patience-saving work.