How do dictionaries determine popular usage?

[HazelNutCoffee]

I read somewhere that some dictionaries list their definitions in order of popular usage, from most to least popular. I always thought they did it in chronological order. How would one go about determining which definition is most commonly used? Do they survey a ton of written sources?

[Exapno_Mapcase]

Most modern American dictionaries list definitions in presumed order of commonality. Yes, they look at many written sources.

The problems lie in exactly what you’d think they’d be: How many sources can they check for every word, what range of sources do they use, how old are these sources and how often are they checked, and how do they define the exact usage?

However, most words don’t change their most common usage very often. The editors probably look at a selected list of words that lexicographers agree are in flux and chart their progress. There’s a whole community of people who do this and they talk to each other all the time.

[HazelNutCoffee]

@Exapno_Mapcase

Most modern American dictionaries list definitions in presumed order of commonality. Yes, they look at many written sources.

Really? I read that the OED (I know, not American) and Merriam Webster list their definitions in chronological order. Aren’t those the two authoritative sources for dictionaries?

[Exapno_Mapcase]

Nope. Random House, American Heritage and Encarta all list in order of commonality. Three out of four is most.

I know my OED doesn’t, so that’s why I said American. (Although I’m not sure whether the third edition will change that.) I don’t own a Merriam-Webster so I haven’t checked it.

[Siam_Sam]

American Heritage has a much-vaunted Usage Panel. They’re listed at the beginning, at least in the larger hard copies, and come from quite diverse fields. I know Tony Randall and Carl Sagan used to be included.

[HazelNutCoffee]

Thanks for the answers.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@Siam_Sam

American Heritage has a much-vaunted Usage Panel. They’re listed at the beginning, at least in the larger hard copies, and come from quite diverse fields. I know Tony Randall and Carl Sagan used to be included.

Not a coincidence but a direct result.

The third edition of the Merriam-Webster Unabridged appeared in 1961. It was greeted as if the Russians had snuck into Washington and changed the Constitution at night. People were insane before the Beatles. I blame nuclear testing.

The editors simply changed the world of dictionaries by rewriting the second edition to make everything descriptive, rather than prescriptive. They even included ain’t. The high-brow commentators went apeshit. Institutions swore they would never buy the Third and make do with their old Seconds until they fell apart.

Wikipedia has a good summary of the controversy:

Webster’s Third was heavily criticized for its “permissiveness” and its refusal to take a position on what was “proper” English, critics comparing it unfavorably with the Second Edition. As Herbert Morton put it, “Webster’s Second was more than respected. It was accepted as the ultimate authority on meaning and usage and its preeminence was virtually unchallenged in the United States. It did not provoke controversies, it settled them.” Critics charged that the dictionary was reluctant to defend standard English, for example entirely eliminating the labels “colloquial”, “correct”, “incorrect”, “proper”, “improper”, “erroneous”, “humorous”, “jocular”, “poetic”, and “contemptuous”, among others.[5]

Gove’s stance was an exemplar of descriptivist linguistics: describing language as it is or has been used. As David M. Glixon put it in the Saturday Review: “Having descended from God’s throne of supreme authority, the Merriam folks are now seated around the city desk, recording like mad.” Jacques Barzun said this stance made Webster’s Third “the longest political pamphlet ever put together by a party”, done with “a dogma that far transcends the limits of lexicography”. The dictionary’s treatment of “ain’t” was subject to particular scorn, the word receiving no more severe comment from Webster’s Third than: “though disapproved by many and more common in less educated speech, used orally in most parts of the U.S. by many cultivated speakers esp. in the phrase ain’t I”.

The Globe and Mail of Toronto editorialized: “a dictionary’s embrace of the word ‘ain’t’ will comfort the ignorant, confer approval upon the mediocre, and subtly imply that proper English is the tool of only the snob”.[citation needed] The New York Times editorialized that “Webster’s has, it is apparent, surrendered to the permissive school that has been busily extending its beachhead in English instruction in the schools … reinforced the notion that good English is whatever is popular” and “can only accelerate the deterioration” of the English language.[citation needed] The Times’ widely respected Theodore M. Bernstein, its in-house style maven and a professor of journalism at Columbia University, ordered that the Times’ dictionary-of-record would continue to be the Webster’s Second.[citation needed] (It today uses the Webster’s New World Dictionary published by John Wiley & Sons.) Garry Wills in the National Review opined that the new dictionary “has all the modern virtues. It is big, expensive, and ugly. It should be a great success”.

In his Nero Wolfe novel Gambit (1962), Rex Stout famously depicted his erudite armchair detective burning pages from this edition in his fireplace because it sanctioned usages he disliked.

Criticism of the dictionary spurred the creation of the American Heritage Dictionary, where usage notes were determined by a panel of expert writers, commentators, and speakers.

American Heritage, then such a big-deal high-end magazine that it was issued in hardcover each month, saw an opportunity. They created the Usage panel, polling 200+ noted writers about nuances and how they used words. The results killed prescriptivism forever (though you can see its zombie remains even today). Good writers - even the best, selected, greatest of good writers - didn’t agree on anything. No matter what your stance was on any disputed term, you could find a sizable percentage of the elite approving it.

There are massive ironies here. The editors actually had planned to go back to a more prescriptive style of dictionary to sell to that audience. But nobody paid any attention to anything but the Usage Panel. That was back in 1969. (Random House had also put out an Unabridged in 1966 which concentrates on other features and ducked the controversy.) Both have put out revised editions since, all descriptive.

After that, nobody has ever written a prescriptive dictionary for the masses, to my knowledge.

Merriam-Webster’s was therefore the first truly modern dictionary. I had thought that it issued a Fourth edition, but that’s wrong. It’s been revising the Third for 50 years, which makes problematical the question of whether it is still a modern dictionary at all.

Merriam-Webster never really got its reputation back, but stays in the business with its collegiate dictionaries and the Webster’s name. Oxford heavily entered the American market with collegiate editions as well. The Third unabridged edition of the OED may not even see a paper version at all, but be entirely online.

Changes in meaning and usage are so fast these days that the concept of recording them on paper and keeping them fixed for decades is virtually obsolete. The Urban Dictionary is a far better example of the way language actually gets used and mutated than a formal dictionary. I don’t see how they can compete on usage. Spelling, syllabification, pronunciation, derivation, yes. Usage? Too slippery to be caught. I’d have nightmares if I were editor of a dictionary these days.