Unabridged: some thoughts on a new book about dictionaries and words

Unabridged refers to the title of Webster’s great dictionary. The author of the book, published by Grove Atlantic Monthly Press (New York) in October 2025, is Stefan Fatsis. This volume of nearly 400 pages has the subtitle: “The Thrill of (and Threat to) the Modern Dictionary.” Below, I will summarize my impressions of Fatsis’s book. Perhaps Unabridged in the title also refers to the volume’s scope, because it presents a broad picture of British and American lexicography for more than two centuries.

Fatsis has been a passionate word lover since early age, so his foray into the history and practice of dictionary making was not a whim. He approached his project in the best way possible: he got himself hired as a lexicographer-in-training, spent several years with Webster, wrote numerous definitions, spoke to dozens of specialists in the United States and at Oxford, and finally produced this book about dictionaries and dictionary making—not only about Webster’s Unabridged. Rarely does he say something that gives away his insufficient mastery of the subject. Thus, on p. 71, he calls Notes and Queries an obscure British journal. In fact, it was for years one of the most popular weeklies in the English-speaking world, and it still exists. The OED has always been fully aware of it. But this is just faultfinding. Fatsis did become an expert.

I am surprised that we never met. For years we attended the same biennial conferences of The Dictionary Society of North America, talked to and made friends with the same people, and listened to the same presentations. Better late than never. Now we’ll meet virtually in this blog. The book, which in addition to the indispensable introductory remarks, acknowledgments, endnotes (excellent endnotes), bibliography, and an index, contains thirteen chapters. Among other things, they are devoted to the history of Webster’s dictionary. Who were the two Merriam brothers? Their names are now indelibly tied to Noah Webster’s. We do know such hybrids, Schubert-Liszt and Verdi-Liszt, for example. What stands behind the symbiosis? In this case, the story is worth reading. 

Two main questions about dictionaries recur again and again. How many words should be included? And how should they be defined? How, for example, do you define in, as, so, oh, weather, be, and thousands of others? And does anyone need such definitions? New words flood language (any language) at all times. When we study the past, we depend on written records, because only such as are extant. But even a dictionary of Old English, which deals with a closed corpus, is incredibly difficult to put together. Though a living language grows every minute, most of us need not worry about this circumstance. We know what we know, and if some word is new to us, we may either disregard it or look it up. But lexicographers have to anticipate everybody’s questions, and when we do look up a word (for its meaning, spelling, pronunciation, use, or origin), we expect it to be there. Hence this endless, self-defeating chase for the words coined the day before yesterday, yesterday, or five minutes ago. Hundreds of them are stillborn. For an online dictionary space is not a problem, but paper editions cannot be allowed to weigh a ton.

Fatsis believes that modern dictionaries should be all-inclusive: if a word exists or once had, in the poet’s words, its singing minute, get hold of it and rejoice. Also, volatile slang, obscenities, and ethnic slurs? Well, yes. This book is by far not the first one about dictionaries and their problems. Webster’s Third had the audacity to include the F-word and the seemingly innocuous ain’t (my spellchecker still underlines ain’t in red). Today the storm that followed the publication of that dictionary is hard to imagine. The unpronounceable F-word? My goodness! This is the most frequent word (plus its derivatives) hundreds of people use actively. Even our elected representatives constantly feel f-ed up by their f-in’ opponents and share their hurt feelings with the public. Why should dictionaries be guardians of good manners? Actually, they often (and nowadays, even regularly) do play this role, by explaining how certain words are used, where they may or should be avoided, and so forth.

What I missed in this book is a broad discussion of dictionary inclusion and culture. A great dictionary, a monument erected for all times, does feature all the words it can net, but this feast is partly wasted. The vocabulary of our young people is tragically small. Even the books by Mark Twain and Jack London (whom our American children and grandchildren seldom read, if at all), to say nothing of Jane Austen, Dickens, and Thackery, are full of words they don’t understand and don’t care to learn. Dictionaries are getting richer and richer, while individual vocabularies have dwindled like Balzac’s la peau du chagrin (my favorite phrase, which, much to my chagrin, no student I have met so far was able to understand).

More harping on the same note! Fatsis did not mention Spelling Bee, this institutionalized torture chamber, but devoted an enthusiastic chapter to the Word of the Year. What passions, what spirited discussions about a moth that will die an hour later! And all that from the people who call themselves linguists. That says something about the level of modern linguistics. Fatsis, as I said, takes the liveliest interest in such contests. He is a man of liberal views, investigates at great length the history of the adjective woke, likes the new use of pronouns, and many other things that are not to my taste. But I am a highbrow, while he would probably be proud to call himself a lowbrow (no offence meant, and I hope no offence taken). I would prefer chapters on pronunciation and etymology in dictionaries. Both subjects are barely mentioned in the book.

Glossaries and dictionaries have existed for millennia, but the Internet and AI killed their print versions. Such is the way of all flesh. Though even today people sometimes ride horses in towns, usually they drive cars. The OED and Merriam Webster have survived so far by resorting to websites and ads of all kinds and thus attracting funding, but even they have gone online. All print editions have succumbed to the spirit of our virtual epoch. Do you still remember Funk and Wagnalls, the glorious Random House, and the many editions of Heritage Dictionary? Gone, all gone, and with them hundreds of lexicographers were, to use the impolite British phrase, made redundant. In his recent interview with the Pennsylvania Gazette, Fatsis said (in connection with print books and newspapers): “The New York Times is thriving in part because of its growth of its games and recipes offerings.” Hear, hear!

My conclusion? A fine book. Read it from cover to cover. Some chapters are truly excellent, the best one being about the late collector Madeline Kripke. The last two chapters are also excellent. And here is the opening sentence of the Introduction: “I fell in love with the dictionaries on my eleventh birthday. My big present that day in 1974 was Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language (Second college edition, Deluxe Color edition), published by the World Publishing Company of Cleveland, Ohio).” Nothing is better than remaining true to one’s first love, especially when it is reciprocated.

_{Featured image: Image from page 450 of “The California horticulturalist and floral magazine” (1870). Public domain via The Internet Archive on Flickr.}