Bergen Evans

The storm of abuse in the popular press that greeted the appearance of Webster's Third New International Dictionary is a curious phenomenon. Never has a scholarly work of this stature been attacked with such unbridled fury and contempt. An article in the Atlantic viewed it as a "disappointment," a "shock," a " calamity ," "a scandal and a disaster. " The New York Times, in a special editorial, felt that the work would " accelerate the deterioration " of the language and sternly accused the editors of betraying a public trust. The Journal of the American Bar Association saw the publication as " deplorable ," "a flagrant example of lexicographic irresponsibility,, " "a ser, ious blow to the cause of good English." Life called it "a non-word deluge " monstrous ", " abominable ," and "a cause for dismay." They doubted that "Lincoln could have modelled his Gettysburg Address" on it-a concept of how things get written that throws very little light on Lincoln but a great deal on Life.

What underlies all this sound and fury? Is the claim of the G. R C. Merriam Company, probably the world's greatest dictionary maker, that the preparation of the work cost $3.5 million, that it required the efforts of three hundred scholars over a period of twenty-seven years, working on the largest collection of citations ever assembled in any language-is all this a fraud, a hoax?