Unabridged The thrill of (and threat to) the modern dictionary

Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In this striking account, journalist Fatsis (Word Freak) explores the history and current state of the dictionary industry. Embedding himself within Merriam-Webster's office as a "lexicographer-in-training," he not only sifts through sprawling archives of citation slips ("crammed inside drawers, stacked in stairwells, smushed into creaky filing cabinets") that record multigenerational debates over the definitions of words, but strives to convince his editor to enter words like alt-right and microaggression into Merriam-Webster's hallowed pages. The book acquires an unexpectedly wide-ranging scope as Fatsis unearths contentious, centuries-long quibbles over gender-neutral pronouns--one suggestion from 1884: thon--and visits fanatical collectors like the "doyenne of dictionaries" Madeline Kripke, whose extensive collection, stuffed inside her Greenwich Village apartment, includes studies on words used by "tramps, hobos, and the unhoused." The author also probes the many controversies provoked by swear words and slurs (the intra-office effort to produce one such entry was like "defusing a bomb") and recollects how a citation he entered for sheeple, drawn from a negative review of an iPhone case, caused a kerfuffle among Apple devotees. Fatsis portrays the dictionary industry as dedicated to maintaining its rigor and excellence but, especially with its many recent layoffs and closures (as well as the surprise prominence of its trolling social media presence), also constantly in flux--much as the language it catalogs remains "slippery and mutable and forever collapsing in on itself." Capacious and revealing, this is a logophile's dream. (Oct.)

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Review by Library Journal Review

Fatsis (A Few Seconds of Panic: A Sportswriter Plays in the NFL) shares his fascination with lexicography in this entertaining, informative, and sobering book. In contrast to other works chronicling the advent of dictionaries, his focus is mainly on the present and future. His experiences and observations spring from Noah Webster's first American dictionary and its subsequent transformation into the commercially viable Merriam-Webster dictionary that is still operating today. The story of how it became prominent details the many interesting people who have helped propel its success. Along the way, readers learn how its lexicographers select words for inclusion and how they define, organize, and enter these words. Viewing these word decisions as important historical evidence of American linguistic and cultural changes, Fatsis further describes how this highly organized static world of print is now evolving into a dynamic, constantly changing digital model. He sees threats and opportunities for modern dictionaries to remain relevant in a future dominated by artificial intelligence. VERDICT Word lovers everywhere will appreciate this book, which will also fill a gap in library dictionary collections.--Karen Bordonaro

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

A romp in the land of lexicography. Journalist Fatsis, author of the kindred bookWord Freak, talked his way into the headquarters of Merriam-Webster in Springfield, Massachusetts, after learning that "the company was overhauling its foundational book,Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged." The last major revision had occurred decades earlier, in 1961, totaling some 465,000 words--and, given that speakers of the English language were coining words ("Doomscrolling one year,cheugy another,rizz the next") far faster than the dictionary could keep up with, there was plenty to do. Yet, as Fatsis chronicles, Merriam-Webster was the last dictionary standing: Its competitors had folded their tents, and though alone in the field, even Merriam-Webster was forced to lay off employees as Google and Wikipedia became go-to sources for information, albeit at far lower quality. Fatsis writes engagingly of lexicographic heroes such as Madeline Kripke, who amassed perhaps the finest language library in the world but died of Covid-19 before that new word could be added. He gamely wades into linguistic controversies, one being the inclusion of the "n-word," which occasioned a boycott in the late 1990s and a sage but unpersuasive reply from the publisher that "to remove the word from the dictionary would simply mislead people by creating the false impression that racial slurs are no longer part of our culture, and that, tragically, is not the case." And Fatsis, who crafted 90 definitions for M-W (alt-right,burkini,microaggression), and who begins his book by wondering whether human editors are on the way out in favor of artificial intelligence, reckons that AI is "good at some things, bad at others, and, as of the publication of this book's first edition in late 2025, not a threat to completely upend the last gladiators of commercial lexicography." An entertaining, instructive look into how words make their way into the dictionary. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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