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Random House Webster's College Dictionary

© Sandra Linville

When is a dictionary more than a dictionary? When it is the latest edition of Random House Webster’s College Dictionary (RHWCD). You can use it for more than looking up the definition of a word, although there are more than enough words.

Wordsmiths usually have several dictionaries in their personal libraries and many word aficionados collect dictionaries to track words lost to modern-day lexicons. Professionals must have specialized dictionaries with their professions’ glossaries.

Some prefer the Oxford English Dictionary with its substantive etymological discussions. Other households have more than one dictionary, one for each occasion. However, most English-speaking homes and college students need only one all-purpose dictionary. Random House Webster’s College Dictionary is that dictionary. Luckily, it is also an excellent reference and has been since its first publication in 1947. Proud of its innovation, it always includes new words not included in any other college dictionary. This excellent desktop hardcover dictionary features more than words and definitions and is an ideal dictionary for the one-dictionary household or for the college student.

World maps, a table of state capitals, a guide to the proper use of capitalization, a writers guide, a guide to finding idioms in the dictionary, an essay about defining the English language for the 21st century and an essay about avoiding insensitive and offensive language are all in the Random House dictionary. This 40-page Ready Reference Supplement features many more guides, essays, charts and tables to help English speakers and writers.

But, it also has plenty of words, some 207,000 words with definitions, including hundreds of new words. These new words include antitheft, backstory, bot, clicks-and-mortar, dead-cat bounce, domain name, edgy, eye candy, fashionista, mouse potato, senior moment and wetware (the human brain, especially when thought of as functionally equivalent to computer hardware/software).

The dictionary also continues to add to its Canadian English words and definitions. Some new entries are Bay Street, butter tart, First Minister, found-in, gaspereau, humidex, lake boat, poutine, saltchuck and separate school.

The up-to-date biological and geographical entries are also very useful. These entries are updated annually.

The dictionary prides itself in its new word additions and reviews many of those words in the front-of-the-book essay, “Defining Our Language for the 21st Century.”

In this essay, it is stated: “The survey below of some of the more familiar or outstanding new words that have entered English since the 1940s reveals a great deal about the changes that occurred in the world during the past fifty years. It also shows, decade by decade, how the language has reflected these changes. Many of the words on the lists below appeared first in one of the Random House dictionaries. For example, the first standard dictionary to enter “Internet” and “World Wide Web” was the RHWCD.