MERRIAM-WEBSTER DICTIONARY

any of various lexicographic works published by the G. & C. Merriam Company (renamed Merriam-Webster Inc. in 1982), which is now headquartered in Springfield, Mass., U.S., and which since 1964 has been a subsidiary of Encyclopdia Britannica, Inc. Among the dictionaries are Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language (1961), which contains more than 450,000 entries and provides the most extensive record of contemporary American pronunciation now available, and several editions of the Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary. The G. & C. Merriam Company, which had been primarily a publisher of school readers after its founding in 1831, acquired the rights after the death of Noah Webster in 1843 to his An American Dictionary of the English Language. This work had first been published in 1828 and was the first American unabridged dictionary. A second edition of this dictionary had been published in 1840, and subsequent editions of the work were published by the company in 1847 and 1864. The 1890 revision, entitled Webster's International Dictionary, required 10 years for completion; this was followed in 1909 by the Webster's New International Dictionary, which contained about 450,000 entries. The second edition of Webster's New International Dictionary was published in 1934. The third edition, published in 1961, is the New International noted above.