Most Popular Dictionaries in Libraries

[Page Stephens]

Many years ago Rex Stout wrote in one of his Nero Wolfe novels about the
time when Archie Goodwin walked in on Wolfe in the front room of the old
brownstone only to find Wolfe tearing out each page of Webster's New
International Dictionary Third Edition, wadding them up and throwing them
into the fireplace. When Archie asked him why he was doing this Wolf
replied that he would not have a dictionary in his house which defined
infer as a synonym for imply. When someone asked Stout about what he had
done with his own copy he replied that he had soaked it in kerosine and
used it to smoke out a wasps' nest.

His argument was that it was not a writer's dictionary which gave
information about correct usage and was therefore useless to him. He also
once wrote via Wolfe that contact is not a verb in this house.

I  bought my own copy of the second edition from a library sale since it
had been out of print for a few years when I finally discovered one.

Stout always allows Archie who is from Ohio which is near to where Stout
grew up in the midwest to use slang but Wolfe is always grammatically
correct in spite of the fact that he is a non native English speaker. On
the other hand Archie's use of slang, ie finif (from the Yiddish) for a
five doillar bill always sounds to my midwestern ear more New York than
anything I ever heard growing up.

This brings up another problem which has always intrigued me. Two of the
most precise writers of English prose I have ever read are Joseph Conrad
and Vladimir Nabakov neither of whom were native speakers of English.

Anyone have any ideas on this subject?

Page Stephens

> [Original Message]
> From: Fred Shapiro <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU>
> To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Date: 12/26/2005 8:11:17 AM
> Subject: Most Popular Dictionaries in Libraries
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
-----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Fred Shapiro <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Most Popular Dictionaries in Libraries
>
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>
> Out of idle curiosity, I looked at WorldCat to determine which
> English-language lexical dictionaries were held by the most U.S.
> libraries.  Below are the results.  I am puzzled that the excellent, and I
> would have thought, very popular Merriam-Webster dictionaries are not
> higher on the list.
>
>
> 1 Random House Dictionary of the English Language, 1987         2958
>
> 2 American Heritage Dictionary of the English
>    Language                                        1992         2694
>
> 3 Black's Law Dictionary                           1999         2644
>
> 4 Black's Law Dictionary                           1979         2504
>
> 5 Black's Law Dictionary                           1990         2488
>
> 6 Dictionary of American Regional English          1985-        2442
>
> 7 Oxford English Dictionary                        1989         2339
>
> 8 American Heritage Dictionary of the English
>    Language                                        2000         2246
>
> 9 Facts on File Visual Dictionary                  1986         2243
>
> 10 American Heritage Dictionary                    1982         2195
>
> 11 New Dictionary of American Slang                1986         2136
>
> 12 Oxford American Dictionary                      1980         2089
>
> 13 Dictionary of American Slang                    1975         2084
>
> 14 Webster's Sports Dictionary                     1976         2050
>
> 15 American Heritage Dictionary of the English
>     Language                                       1969         2014
>
> 16 Random House Historical Dictionary of American
>     Slang                                          1994-        1980
>
> 17 Dorland's Illustrated Medical Dictionary        1957-        1833
>
> 18 Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary         1993         1826
>
> 19 Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary         2003         1795
>
> 20 Webster's Third New International Dictionary    1986         1717
>
>
> Fred Shapiro
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
> Associate Librarian for Collections and     YALE DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS
>    Access and Lecturer in Legal Research     Yale University Press,
> Yale Law School                             forthcoming
> e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu               http://quotationdictionary.com
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------