rdf-syntax-grammar
mods:
  schema location: http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3 http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-3-2.xsd
  title info:
    title: Unabridged
    sub title: the thrill of (and threat to) the modern dictionary
  name:
    name part: Fatsis, Stefan
    role:
      role term: creator
    role:
      role term: author.
  type of resource: text
  genre: bibliography
  origin info:
    place:
      place term: nyu
    date issued: 2025
    copyright date: 2025
    edition: First edition.
    issuance: monographic
  language:
    language term: eng
  physical description:
    form: print
    extent: xi, 397 pages ; 24 cm.
  abstract: From the author of the New York Times bestseller Word Freak, a vibrant, lively and illuminating journey through the exotic world of Merriam-Webster, dictionaries and language, at a time of rapid-fire change in the way we create, consume, define and use words. Words are the currency of culture and never more than today. From selfie to doomscrolling to rizz, our hyper-connected digital world coins and spreads new words with lightning speed and locks them into mainstream consciousness with unprecedented influence. Journalist and bestselling author Stefan Fatsis embedded as a lexicographer-in-training at America's most famous dictionary publisher, Merriam-Webster, to learn how words get into the dictionary, where they come from, who decides what they mean and how we write and think about them. In so doing, as he recounts in Unabridged, he discovered the history and fascinating subculture of the dictionary and of those who curate and revere "one of the most basic features of our collective humanity." Fatsis reveals the little-known story of how the brothers George and Charles Merriam acquired Noah Webster's original American dictionary and reshaped the business of language forever. Merriam-Webster became America's most successful and enduring compendium of words, withstanding intense competition and cultural controversies, only to be threatened by the power of Google and artificial intelligence today. Delving into Merriam's legendary archives and parsing its arcane rules, Fatsis learns the painstaking precision required for writing good definitions. He examines how the dictionary has handled the most explosive slurs and the revolutionary change in pronouns. He votes on the annual Word of the Year, travels to the legendary Oxford English Dictionary and visits the world's greatest private dictionary collection in a Greenwich Village apartment stuffed with more than 20,000 books. Fatsis demonstrates how words are weaponized in our polarized political culture, from liberal t…
  note: Stefan Fatsis.
  note: Includes bibliographical references and index.
  subject:
    name:
      name part: Merriam-Webster, Inc.
    topic: History
  subject:
    title info:
      title: Merriam-Webster
  subject:
    topic: English language
    topic: Lexicography
    topic: History
  subject:
    topic: Encyclopedias and dictionaries
    topic: History and criticism
  classification: PE1617.M34 F38 2025
  classification: 423.028
  identifier: 9780802165824
  identifier: 0802165826
  identifier: 9780802165831
  identifier: 2025024315
  record info:
    record content source: DLC
    record creation date: 250710
    record change date: 20251119212403.1
    record identifier: in00005669442