Century Dictionary
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The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia was one of the largest and
most highly regarded dictionaries of the English language. The first
edition was published from 1889 to 1891 by the Century Company of
New York, in six, eight, or ten volume versions (originally issued
in 24 fascicles) in 7,046 pages with some 10,000 wood-engraved
illustrations. It was edited by Sanskrit scholar and linguist
William Dwight Whitney, with Benjamin Eli Smith's assistance. It was
largely based on the smaller Imperial Dictionary, which in turn had
been based on the 1841 edition of Noah Webster's 'American
Dictionary.
After Whitney's death in 1894, supplementary volumes were published
under Smith's supervision, including, The Century Cyclopedia of
Names (1894) and The Century Atlas (1897). A two-volume Supplement
of new vocabulary, published in 1909, completed the dictionary. A
reformatted edition, The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia, was
published in 1911 in twelve quarto volumes: ten of vocabulary, plus
the volume of names and the atlas. This set went through several
printings, the last in 1914. The same year, the ten vocabulary
volumes were published as one giant volume, about 8500 pages in a
very thin paper. The now much coveted India paper edition also
appeared around this time, usually in 5 double volumes (rarely, in
10 single volumes) plus one additional for the Cyclopedia.
The completed dictionary contained over 500,000 entries, more than
Webster's New International or Funk and Wagnalls New Standard, the
largest other dictionaries of the period. Each form of a word was
treated separately, and liberal numbers of quotations and additional
information were included to support the definitions. In its
etymologies, Greek words were not transliterated.
Although the dictionary was never again revised or expanded, an
abridged edition with new words, The New Century Dictionary (edited
by H.G. Emery and K.G. Brewster; revision editor, Catherine B.
Avery,) was published by Appleton-Century-Crofts of New York in
1927, and reprinted in various forms for several decades. The three
volume "New Century Cyclopedia of Names," an expansion of the 1894
volume, was published in 1954, edited by Clarence Barnhart.
The Century Dictionary was admired for the quality of its entries,
the craftsmanship in its design, typography, and binding, and its
excellent illustrations. It has been used as an information source
for the makers of many later dictionaries, including editors of the
Oxford English Dictionary, who cited it over 2,000 times in the
first edition. In 1913, Stewart Archer Steger from the University of
Virginia published his Ph.D. dissertation "American Dictionaries"
and devoted a 14-page Chapter VI on Century Dictionary. He concluded
the chapter with these words: "Altogether, The Century Dictionary
far surpasses anything in American lexicography".
The complete Century Dictionary can be found
online at:
http://www.global-language.com/CENTURY/
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