unabridged dictionary

If you take a look at the masthead to the left of this message, you will see that many of our Michigan History team members are "editors." The Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary online defines an editor as "one who revises, corrects, or arranges the contents and style of the literary, artistic, or musical work of others for publication or presentation." And that's exactly what we do.

"The Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti went through Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, cover to cover." Malcolm X, in prison, frustrated by the poverty of his language, acquired a dictionary and copied the whole book out, word for word.

1 probably shouldn't be so critical, since I do not have an unabridged dictionary to see if there really is such a word as "sune."

Printed reference works are vanishing in the 21st century - the days when families would fill a bookshelf with a set of World Book encyclopedias, or even possess an unabridged dictionary, have given way to the era of Wikipedia and spellcheck.

Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary (New York: Random House, 1996).

suggestion; prompting - Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, published 1913 by C.

In part, that document says that democracy is "a government of the masses; Results in mobocracy; Attitude toward property is communistic; Results in demagoguism, license, agitation, discontent and anarchy." Skip ahead to the 1983 Random House Unabridged Dictionary and see it telling us that democracy is "government by the people," even boldly stating, "The United States and Canada are democracies." Under this definition, there's no need for a body of law, such as a Constitution, that establishes a true republic.

In 1961 "religious humanism" entered the Merriam-Webster's Third International Unabridged Dictionary with this barebones definition: "A modern American movement composed chiefly of nontheistic humanists and humanist churches and dedicated to achieving the ethical goals of religion without beliefs and rites resting upon supernaturalism." Note that functions other than "ethical" were overlooked here.

John Ferguson of Silver Spring, Md., who pointed out to me several years ago that the word appeared in Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (2nd Ed.) out of alphabetical order!