War of the words

Dictionary publisher says reference book evolves with time - and debate

John Morse is in charge of several dictionaries, but it’s not always the big words that get his mind going.

He’s been thinking lately about “bling-bling,” which, according to the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, means “flashy jewelry worn especially as an indication of wealth.”

It was added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary earlier this year, but Morse worries it might be too transient a word, too much a part of fleeting slang.

“Most dictionary makers now put bling-bling in the dictionary,” Morse says. “But one wonders if, five years from now, we’re still going to talk about bling-bling.”

These are the sorts of issues Morse, president and publisher of Merriam-Webster dictionaries, has to think about every day. He’s been publisher of Merriam-Webster Inc. for a decade, and president of the company for nine years.

Morse will speak Thursday night at Kansas University. He’s on a speaking tour this year to highlight the 200th anniversary of the first dictionary compiled by Noah Webster.

To Morse, that first dictionary was much more than just a bunch of words with definitions. He considers it the “quintessential democratic document.”

“The reason I say that is when I explain the whole process of making the dictionary, it becomes clear to people that we don’t just sit here in our offices in Springfield, Massachusetts, and make up the words that go into the dictionary,” Morse says. “Words go in the dictionary because we’ve discovered people are actually using them.”

Getting wordy with it

What: “Dictionaries and Democracy: 200 Years of Dictionary Making in America, 1806-2006,” a talk by John M. Morse, president and publisher of Merriam-Webster Inc.
When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday
Where: Alderson Auditorium, fourth floor of the Kansas Union, 1301 Jayhawk Blvd.
Admission: Free and open to the public

Definition debates

This year, the new additions – those words people are using now – include “avian influenza,” “drama queen,” “unibrow” and “ringtone.” They’ll show up for the first time in next year’s dictionaries.

Morse says there are rarely knock-down, drag-out fights among his 50-person editorial staff when it comes to adding new words.

“Dictionary people are mild-mannered by nature,” he says. “But sure, there is always a question of this as an interpretative practice, and one that is asking the question, ‘Has this word established itself broadly enough in the language, and also is it going to stay in the language.'”

With the spread of vocabulary via the Internet, it takes far less time for a word to make it into the dictionary today than it would have in the past. Morse says researchers always try to find the earliest reference they can for use of a particular word when it’s going to be added to the dictionary.

Several decades ago, a word might have been around 10 to 20 years before it was put in the dictionary. Now, it might only be three to five years, especially for words that deal with technology. Or, several years ago, the same was true with SARS (for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), which became a wordwide fear nearly overnight.

Morse says the debate over when to take words out of the dictionary is less contentious. Those are usually outdated scientific or technological words.

“By the time you take it out of the dictionary,” he says, “it probably really has become very obscure, and it’s a word that’s probably really being used by no one and is unlikely to have any champions within the editorial department hoping for it to stay in.”

Tech effects

Morse says the rise of Internet and other electronic references hasn’t hit dictionaries as hard as it has hit encyclopedias. Merriam-Webster has a free, searchable version of its Collegiate Dictionary at its Web site www.m-w.com.

“I see ourselves as being in what I’m calling ‘The Age of Also,’ which is that these multiple delivery platforms can exist side by side,” Morse says. “And I think that’s going to be the case for several more decades, that we will see both print and electronic forms existing side by side, because some days you want the convenience of getting it from a dictionary off the hard drive of your laptop, sometimes you want to get it off the Web, some days you want to get it off your cell phone, and some days you just want to crack open a book and find it there.”

These days, Morse says, two issues tend to monopolize water-cooler talk at his office:

l When is a trademarked word used so much in its generic form that it should be included in the dictionary?

“Right now, we’re debating over the word ‘podcast,’ which by all accounts is a word out that is out now in our language and would be a real candidate for admission to the dictionary,” Morse says. “But there are some trademark issues on it. We certainly don’t want to do anything that endangers a person’s trademark on something, but we also, to the extent there is generic use of a word, have an obligation to record that as well.”

l How sophisticated should definitions be?

“It’s very often the nonscientists on our staff who will make fun of the level of complexity in a medical definition,” Morse says. “They’ll say, ‘Look at all these big words. No one knows those words.’ And the medical definer comes back and says, ‘Ah, but if they’re looking up this word’ – let’s say it’s some disease – ‘they may well want to learn the other words associated with it, because the doctor may use those words tomorrow.'”

In the end, Morse says, most definers err on the side of sophistication. He personally thinks people still take their dictionaries very seriously.

“We don’t say, ‘No, people coming to the dictionary are sort of dumb people with silly questions who just want an easy answer,’ which might be a temptation for some publishers,” Morse says. “But we really resist that. We take it as kind of gospel that a person coming to the dictionary is a serious person with a serious question who wants a serious answer.”