Editing Webster's Dictionary (section)

== Competition ==
Noah Webster's main competitor was [[Joseph Emerson Worcester]], whose 1830 ''Comprehensive Pronouncing and Explanatory Dictionary of the English Language'' brought accusations of plagiarism from Webster. The rivalry was carried on by Merriam after Webster's death, in what is often referred to as the "Dictionary Wars". After Worcester's death in 1865, revision of his ''Dictionary of the English Language'' was soon discontinued, and it eventually went out of print.

The American edition of [[Charles Annandale|Charles Annandale's]] four volume revision of ''[[The Imperial Dictionary of the English Language]]'', published in 1883 by the Century Company, was more comprehensive than the ''Unabridged''. The ''[[Century Dictionary]]'', an expansion of the ''Imperial'' first published from 1889 to 1891, covered a larger vocabulary until the publication of ''Webster's Second'' in 1934, after the ''Century'' had ceased publication.

In 1894 came ''[[Funk & Wagnalls]] Standard Dictionary'', an attractive one volume counterpart to ''Webster's International''. The expanded ''New Standard'' of 1913 was a worthy challenge to the ''New International'', and remained a major competitor for many years. However, Funk & Wagnalls never revised the work, reprinting it virtually unchanged for more than 50 years, while Merriam published two major revisions.

The ''[[Oxford English Dictionary]]'' (''OED''), which published its complete first edition in 1933, challenged ''Merriam'' in scholarship, though not in the marketplace due to its much larger size. The ''New International'' editions continued to offer words and features not covered by the ''OED'', and vice versa. In the 1970s, the ''OED'' began publishing ''Supplements'' to its dictionary and in 1989 integrated the new words in the supplements with the older definitions and etymologies in its ''Second Edition''.

Between the 1930s and the 1950s, several college dictionaries, notably the ''[[American College Dictionary]]'' and (non-Merriam) ''[[Webster's New World Dictionary]]'', entered the market alongside the ''Collegiate''. Among larger dictionaries during this period was (non-Merriam) ''Webster's Universal Dictionary'' (also published as ''Webster's Twentieth Century Dictionary'') which traced its roots to Noah Webster and called itself "unabridged", but had less than half the vocabulary and paled in scholarship against the ''Merriam'' editions.

After the commercial success of ''Webster's Third New International'' in the 1960s,<ref>{{cite news|last1=Reid|first1=T. R.|title=Brave New Words a Dictionary for Today|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/1987/11/08/brave-new-words-a-dictionary-for-today/478f8203-cd39-4f8c-9833-9283ffc49369/|access-date=July 15, 2017|newspaper=The Washington Post|date=November 8, 1987|archive-date=August 4, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180804050117/https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/1987/11/08/brave-new-words-a-dictionary-for-today/478f8203-cd39-4f8c-9833-9283ffc49369/|url-status=live}}</ref> [[Random House]] responded by adapting its college dictionary by adding more illustrations and large numbers of proper names, increasing its print size and page thickness, and giving it a heavy cover. In 1966, it was published as a new "unabridged" dictionary. It was expanded in 1987, but it still covered no more than half the actual vocabulary of ''Webster's Third''.

The American Heritage Publishing Co., highly critical of ''Webster's Third'', failed in an attempt to buy out Merriam-Webster and determined to create its own dictionary, ''[[The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language]]''. In 1969, it issued a college-sized dictionary. Now in its fifth edition, it is only slightly greater in vocabulary than the ''Collegiate'', but it appears much larger and has the appeal of many pictures and other features, such as a usage panel of language professionals which is polled for the acceptability of certain word usage, and a discussion for some entries of subtle differences among words with similar meaning. Other medium-sized dictionaries have since entered the market, including the ''[[New Oxford American Dictionary|New Oxford American]]'' and the [[Encarta Webster's Dictionary|''Encarta Webster's'']], while Merriam-Webster has not attempted to compete by issuing a similar edition.