Word by Word

by Kory Stamper

  It begins, for Noah Webster and the American dictionary as an institution, with Joseph Worcester. Joseph Worcester was an American lexicographer and, to Noah’s mind, Webster’s protégé. He was one of the nameless assistants to Webster during the compilation of the 1828 and also produced his own abridgment of Johnson’s dictionary, supplemented with a popular pronouncing dictionary of the day. Webster hired Worcester to help him complete an abridgment of the 1828, knowing that he had to find a way to make money off his magnum opus. Worcester assisted him and then promptly released his own dictionary in 1830, A Comprehensive Pronouncing and Explanatory Dictionary of the English Language. Webster was livid—hadn’t he given Worcester his start?—and more to the point Worcester’s dictionary was suddenly in direct competition with Webster’s dictionaries to capture the hearts, minds, and (most important) extra cash of America’s schoolchildren and their families. Worcester’s more conservative approach to the language, which preserved more of the British spellings and pronunciations of words, earned him a number of fans.

  And thus begins the Dictionary Wars of the nineteenth century. Webster went on the offensive with the best tool in the nineteenth-century marketer’s arsenal: the scalding anonymous letter to the editor. Webster (or someone representing his interests) started the volley with an anonymous letter published in the Worcester, Massachusetts, Palladium, in November 1834, accusing Worcester of plagiarism and implying that those who bought his dictionaries were not only getting an unoriginal work but also supporting a common thief and materially injuring an American patriot:

  [Worcester] has since published a dictionary, which is a very close imitation of Webster’s; and which, we regret to learn, has been introduced into many of the primary schools of the country. We regret this, because the public, inadvertently, do an act of great injustice to a man who has rendered the country an invaluable service, and ought to recieve [sic] the full benefit of his labors.

  Worcester defended himself, and the hostilities were on.

  When George and Charles Merriam bought the rights to Webster’s dictionaries in 1844, they knew that they couldn’t continue to sell the dictionary at the price that Webster himself had sold it—twenty dollars, exorbitant for the age.*7 Their first order of business was to revise the 1841 edition of Noah’s American Dictionary into a single-volume dictionary that could be sold for six dollars—a sum that, while still a bit steep, was much more in line with what the average consumer could afford in the mid-nineteenth century. The whole point of doing so was to keep up with Worcester. The sale of Webster’s work had been on the decline since Worcester had published his 1830 dictionary, and when Worcester came out with another dictionary in 1846, A Universal and Critical Dictionary of the English Language, all hope seemed lost.

  The Merriams didn’t care about the Webster legacy. Market share was at stake, and so they resorted to the marketing tactics of the nineteenth century: hyperbole and smear.

  The hyperbole begins as soon as the 1847 edition of An American Dictionary of the English Language is published. Advertisements placed in the Evening Post of New York give an extensive list of the new American Dictionary’s merits but end with this:

  The work contains a larger amount of matter than any other volume ever published before in the country, and being the result of more than thirty years’ labor, by the author and editors, at the low price of $6, it is believed to be the largest, CHEAPEST, and BEST work of the kind ever published.

  By contrast, ads for Worcester’s 1846 Universal were staid and stately. No typography tricks, no bluster: just a lengthy explication on the goals and methods of the lexicographer, followed by a few encomiums and testimonials that appealed to the taste and judgment of the discerning reader. But these ads were few and far between. Most mentions of Worcester’s Universal in the papers of 1846–1848 were in ads placed by booksellers that often contain no more information than the title of the dictionary itself.

  The Merriams, on the other hand, continued their lexicographical putsch. Ads full of interesting typography blared, “The largest, best, and cheapest DICTIONARY in the English language is, confessedly, WEBSTER’S.” Worcester’s publishers steadfastly refused to bow to the vulgarity of cheap advertising, while the Merriam brothers went bonkers for it. “Get the best!” ads in 1849 proclaimed and never really stopped.

  Meanwhile, the race was afoot: Worcester was working on a new dictionary, and one of the higher-level editorial staff at the G. & C. Merriam Company heard it was going to have illustrations in it. The Merriams went into action: they slapped some illustrations in a slightly expanded reprint of the 1847, called it a “New Revised Edition” of Webster’s American Dictionary, and started the campaign blitz for its 1859 release all over again. Worcester released his massive dictionary, A Dictionary of the English Language,*8 in 1860 to great acclaim, and his publishers had, in the years leading up to its release, tried to hop on the tagline train with “Wait, and get the best.” But by then, the Merriams had plastered their ads with interesting typography and illustrations all over the papers. “Get the best” was expanded to “Get the best. Get the handsomest. Get the cheapest. Get Webster.” And, as advertising is designed to do, vast claims were made about what owning one of these dictionaries would do for you: “A man who would know everything, or anything, as he ought to know, must own Webster’s large dictionary. It is a great light, and he that will not avail himself of it must walk in darkness.”

  Combine all these things—the mudslinging and character assassination, the outsized commendations of each book, the claims about what owning one of these tomes will do for you—and you can see why the dictionary is considered not just an educational but a moral book in many people’s minds. Later dictionary marketing campaigns did nothing to discourage people from thinking this way. “The last twenty-five years have witnessed an amazing evolution in Man’s practical and cultural knowledge,” an ad for Webster’s Second New International claims in 1934. “No one can know, understand, and take part in the life of this new era without a source of information that is always ready to tell him what he needs to know.” Sales pamphlets for the Third didn’t tone down the grandiloquence, either: “Hold the English language in your two hands and you possess the proven key to knowledge, enjoyment, and success!” In 1961, Mario Pei, in reviewing the Third for The New York Times Book Review, finishes his review with “It is the closest we can get, in America, to the Voice of Authority.” A new marketing tagline was born: Merriam-Webster used “The Voice of Authority” in its marketing materials well into the 1990s.

  It was the marketing and sale of the Third that made the connection between the dictionary, usage, and morality crystal clear.*9 Reviewers of the Third threw up their hands in horror (often over things that were imagined) and declared that the English language as we knew it was finito. Critics called it “a scandal and a disaster” and “big, expensive, and ugly” and said that it was indicative of “a trend toward permissiveness, in the name of democracy, that is debasing our language.”*10 But the criticism wasn’t just bell tolling for English: it was a warning that the Third marked a change in our way of living.

  Jacques Barzun, a well-known writer and historian, ripped into the Third as a culture changer in his review of it for The American Scholar. “It is undoubtedly the longest political pamphlet ever put together by a party. Its 2662 large pages embody—and often preach by suggestion—a dogma that far transcends the limits of lexicography. I have called it a political dogma because it makes assumptions about the people and because it implies a particular view of social intercourse.” Evidence of that dogma? Entries that note that “disinterested” and “uninterested” are sometimes used synonymously, regardless of what usage commentators think. “The book is a faithful record of our emotional weaknesses and intellectual disarray,” Barzun concludes.

  Pei began to have second thoughts about the Third in the summer of 1962 and wrote a piece for the Saturday Review in 1964 that was the culmination of those thoughts
. It is a circumspect diatribe on Anglicized pronunciations, the peculiarities of in-house style sheets regarding punctuation and spelling, and the usual faffing about the labels “standard,” “nonstandard,” and “substandard.” But he frames the issue about a third of the way into his article: “There was far more to the controversy than met the eye, for the battle was not merely over language. It was over a whole philosophy of life.” The creation of The American Heritage Dictionary in the 1960s wasn’t just a linguistic response to the Third but a calculated cultural response to it. One ad for the first edition of The American Heritage Dictionary showed a long-haired young hippie; the ad copy read, “He doesn’t like your politics. Why should he like your dictionary?”

  —

  It is human nature to want to justify your own opinions by appealing to an external authority, and I can back that assertion up by eavesdropping: “my dad says,” “my priest told me,” “it’s the law,” “I read an article that says,” “doctors claim,” to infinity and beyond. It’s why advertisements tell you to “ask your doctor if” their drug is right for you; it’s why teachers make students cite their sources when they write.

  Dictionary companies had no problem setting themselves up as an authority on life, the universe, and everything throughout most of their history, because doing so ultimately sold books. Actual human lexicographers, on the other hand, would rather hide under their desks than be reckoned culture makers. In fact, and in spite of their publishing house’s own marketing copy, they have been deliberately avoiding the cultural fray since at least the mid-nineteenth century. Noah Porter, the editor in chief for Webster’s 1864 American Dictionary of the English Language, sent notes to the staff warning against using quotations from antislavery sermons in the dictionary, because a reference book was not the place for them. Nonetheless, people still assumed that the dictionary was a cultural and political tool: an 1872 article in the McArthur, Ohio, Democratic Enquirer that compares the 1864 with previous editions actually asks, “Why does Dr. Porter ignore the Constitution of the United States?” Dr. Porter, it must be said, was merely writing a dictionary.

  When I scanned the e-mail that had come in about the word “marriage,” it seemed like not much had changed in 137 years. We were accused of partisanship, of bowing to the “gay agenda,” of giving in to pressure to be politically correct instead of just plain correct, of abandoning common sense and Christian tradition. Noah Webster was turning in his grave with shame, I was told. People weren’t just angry; they were frothing mad. “You have crossed the line where you are irresponsible and attempting to pollute the minds of MY CHILDREN…BACK OFF!” one woman warned. I was invited to personally rot in hell no fewer than thirteen times. I was told to get a life, get a fucking life, to fuck off and die, and also to swallow shards of glass mixed in acid. The e-mails were, almost to the letter, uninterested in actually knowing why we entered this new subsense of “marriage.” They didn’t care about the mechanics of language change; they cared about the mechanics of culture change. The existence of this definition was not merely recording a common use of “marriage” (the word); it was a declaration that same-sex marriage (the thing) was possible, and an engine by which same-sex marriage (the thing) would be firmly cemented in our society. Comments on Internet forums echoed the same thought. Jim Daly, the president of the Christian organization Focus on the Family, wrote a blog post highlighting the change to the definition. “The majority of voters in states across the U.S. have consistently rejected the idea of same-sex ‘marriage,’ ” Daly notes in a comment on the post. “As such, it could be argued that Merriam-Webster is shaping culture through their online dictionary.”

  Our marketing director sent me a very quick note on the first day of the onslaught: set aside any e-mails that make actual threats against the company or my person. “Just in case,” she said. I forwarded her e-mail along to our senior publicist, Arthur Bicknell. “I’ve got a guy in here who is calling us all faggots and telling us we deserve to die. Is that actionable? And does this mean I finally qualify for hazard pay?”

  Arthur and I had endured a number of write-in campaigns together—he called us Brother Perpetual Spin and Sister Accidental Scapegoat—but this one was particularly difficult. Every bit of spittle-flecked vitriol that he and I received on a daily basis was horrifying; we both felt dehumanized by it. The hateful comments weren’t just directed toward gay people. One e-mailer asked if the next thing we were going to legislate was letting different races marry (sorry, the Supreme Court actually beat us to that one, thanks for writing), and another’s e-mail handle was like a glossary of white nationalist tropes.

  When you deal with that level of hatred and anger for weeks at a time, there are two paths of sanity open to you: quit your job, or crack jokes. I needed the money, so humor it was. I forwarded one e-mail to Arthur that read, in part, “Marriage is the union of one man and one woman. They are made to fit together and can serve no purpose other than to bring about Aids and spiritual death.” “And this is why you proofread your hate speech,” I commented. “REPENT OF YOUR HOMOSEXUAL MARRIAGE!” one e-mailer bellowed, and I forwarded it to my husband: “This is news to me, but okay: I repent.”

  But the animosity and personal attacks meant the har-dee-har facade I had put up was prone to crumbling. The Sunday after the write-in campaign started, I was milling around after church when a friend approached to tell me she had seen my name in the news. I didn’t respond at all but tried to look nonchalant; I am sure that I looked ready to kick off my shoes and sprint away at the first sign of torches and pitchforks. The first day of the write-in campaign, my mother-in-law sent me an e-mail that began, “I was casually listening to the 700 Club,” and before I read any further, I closed out the e-mail, then the e-mail program, then my browser, and then stabbed at the computer’s power button until the screen went dark, just for good measure.*11

  Fortunately, it seemed like most of my correspondents were less interested in scaring the shit out of me and more interested in maintaining the sanctity of marriage. A large number of the correspondents in my in-box also mentioned that same-sex marriage (the thing) wasn’t legal in most states, and by entering this definition of “marriage” (the word), we were influencing the legality of same-sex marriage. It was clear that same-sex marriage cases were going to appear before the Supreme Court of the United States at some point in the future, and everyone knows that the members of the Court look at dictionaries when deciding a case.

  They do, in fact—a study has shown that their use of dictionaries in deciding cases has increased through the Rehnquist and Roberts courts—but their use is inconsistent, prone to personal whims, and, most important, always secondary. A 2013 study analyzing the Court’s dictionary use in criminal, civil, and corporate law cases found that the justices tended to use dictionaries to bolster an opinion that was already held, rather than confirming the objective meaning of a word. The justices also tend to prefer certain dictionaries, some of which have been arguably out of date since 1934 and inarguably out of print since 1961:

  During our twenty-five year period, the heaviest dictionary users in our dataset include Justices Scalia, Thomas, Breyer, Souter, and Alito. The dictionary profiles for these justices are individualized and distinctive. Justice Scalia opts more heavily for Webster’s Second New International and the American Heritage Dictionary, general dictionaries that have been characterized as prescriptive in the lexicographic literature.*12 Justice Thomas relies disproportionately on Black’s Law Dictionary. Justice Alito is partial to Webster’s Third New International and the Random House Dictionary, both regarded as descriptive. Justices Breyer and Souter are more eclectic: each is a frequent user of Black’s but Breyer also invokes Webster’s Third and the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) with some regularity while Souter turns more often to Webster’s Second. Indeed, even the justices who make disproportionate use of one or two dictionaries are eclectic in that they frequently cite other dictionaries in particular cases. Th
is pattern is consistent with a practice of seeking out definitions that fit a justice’s conception of what a word should mean rather than using dictionaries to determine that meaning.

  The justices even joke about dictionaries while in session. In the oral argument for Taniguchi v. Kan Pacific Saipan Ltd., counsel for the petitioner notes that the defendant only appeals to one dictionary for a definition of “interpreter”—Webster’s Third:

  JUSTICE SCALIA: Webster’s Third, as I recall, is the dictionary that defines “imply” to mean “infer”—

  MR. FRIED: It does, Your Honor.

  JUSTICE SCALIA:—and “infer” to mean “imply.” It’s not a very good dictionary. (Laughter)*13

  There are a number of pivotal court decisions regarding same-sex marriage in America, but four Supreme Court cases take center stage: Lawrence v. Texas (2003), which, while not ruling directly on gay marriage, set the stage by overturning state laws prohibiting sodomy in Texas (and, by extension, thirteen other states); Hollingsworth v. Perry (2013), which upheld the Ninth District Court of Appeals ruling that overturned Proposition 8 (a California ballot measure and state amendment banning same-sex marriage); United States v. Windsor (2013), which held that the part of the Defense of Marriage Act that restricted “marriage” and “spouse” to heterosexual couples was unconstitutional under the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment; and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), in which the Court decided that the fundamental right to marriage for same-sex couples was guaranteed by both the due process clause and the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. All four cases were heard after changes to the definition of “marriage” were made to every major dictionary in use. In all four of the cases, in both oral arguments and written decisions (and dissents), a dictionary definition of “marriage” was cited only twice, in Obergefell v. Hodges. They appear in Chief Justice Roberts’s dissent in support of a restrictive definition of marriage (the thing, not the word); he cites Webster’s 1828 and Black’s Law Dictionary from 1891. Also cited are James Q. Wilson’s Marriage Problem, John Locke’s Second Treatise of Civil Government, William Blackstone’s Commentaries, David Forte’s Framers’ Idea of Marriage and Family, Joel Bishop’s Commentaries on the Law of Marriage and Divorce, G. Robina Quale’s History of Marriage Systems, and Cicero’s De Officiis (in translation). There are four written dissents; only Justice Roberts’s calls upon dictionary definitions.