Talk:Century Dictionary

Doubts about 10 volume original edition
Hello, 68.52.34.194 and/or 69.137.67.227,

If you ever see this, I have a question.

I am a collector of dictionaries, and I wrote most of the Century Dictionary article, which you edited in October 05.

I wonder if you can tell me where you got information that the *original* dictionary was also published in a 10 volume edition. Do you have this, or have you seen it?

I believe the original was made in 6- and 8-volume versions. Also, I have seen a 24-volume edition offered through ABE. I know that a two volume supplement was added to the original vocabulary volumes in 1909, and that it was incorporated into a reformatted version for the 1911 edition of 10 volumes of vocabulary. The Names and Atlas volumes were published separately, and were later made part of the 12-volume 1911 edition.

What I have never heard of is a 10-volume version of the original 1889-91 dictionary. I hesitate to change your edits, but I have some doubts. I hope to hear from you. abstrator@yahoo.com

"expert" sign
I see no need for a big announcement at the beginning of the article stating there is some great need for an expert to come to our rescue. The issue I raised above is a tiny point affecting one sentence. The announcement gives the whole article a taint of unreliability. I will remove the announcement with apologies to the one who added it with good intentions. Hopefully, the question will be answered eventually, maybe by a book dealer. Abstrator 00:51, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Any additional information on the single volume issue of 1914?
I have a copy of this edition and I can't find any information on it on-line. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.194.0.75 (talk) 22:50, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

How related are The New Century Dictionary and the Century Dictionary?
The following sentence (and perhaps the photo) may give too much of an impression that The New Century Dictionary is an inelegant rewrite of parts of the Century Dictionary:-

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 over thirty-five years.

The use of 'never again revised' and the ambiguity of 'with new words' may accidentally give the impression that The New Century Dictionary has little in common with the Century Dictionary. The New Century Dictionary, according to its preface, is an abridged revision.

My copy of The New Century Dictionary, appears to be the 1927 edition, re-printed in 1944 (and the editors, Emery & Brewster, do refer to 'The War'). The 1927 edition was also printed by the Century Company, publishers of a popular magazine. Only in 1933 does the publisher change to D. Appleton-Century Company (not the later Appleton-Century-Crofts reported). Because the typeface is still L.B. Benton's famous 'Century' typeface, designed for The Century Magazine (though in two columns), mine may be only a reprint of the 1927 edition.

The preface indicates the dictionary draws from the Century Dictionary's word list, citation files (over 200,000), and probably beautiful engravings, which this two-volume set is filled with). Its audience is scholars, students, and the 'ordinary dictionary reader'; and it can be considered an 'abridged, condensed, and popular rendering of the original Century Dictionary'.

The addition to The New Century Dictionary of thousands of new words introduced since 'The War', the newer meanings attached to existing words, and possibly the new, historical ordering of definitions, made The New Century Dictionary, in the view of its editors, possibly a newer work (a revision) rather than just an abridgment of the Century Dictionary.

This view is supported by Landau (p.72), who wrote that the American College Dictionary of 1947 drew from both. The New Century Dictionary was the inspiration for the American College Dictionary's informal pronunciation guide at the bottom of each page. The New Century Dictionary seems an important connection between seldom-seen tomes for scholars and the modern college dictionary.

[Landau, S.I., 1984. ''Dictionaries. The Art & Craft of Lexicography''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.]

Mine has viii page of front matter, 2349 pages of definitions and illustrations, and 547 pages of supplements: synonyms, antonyms, and discriminations; abbreviations; business terms; foreign words & phrases; proper names; biographical names; geographical names; tables of measures, weights, &c.

The covers are attractively embossed, maroon red with the book's title gilted in gold leaf. The volumes look just like these, but appear unused. One might easily think the book was published in the 19th Century.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2223/2171788902_86e9b2d6aa.jpg?v=0

I should be happy to take a good-quality photo for an editor to use, should anyone feel it would be advantageous to illustrate better the similarity of these two dictionaries; and if someone could point me toward uploading instructions. :-)

Geologist (talk) 04:11, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree with most of your comments. I made a simple edit to clarify the main issue. I agree that the photo of the New Century is a very poor choice for this article, for more reasons. It should be replaced with a good photo of the original Century, or else the culminating edition. The latter is at http://chez.mana.pf/~wMviN4ui/century1911.html  The New Century is a very nice dictionary, though probably a 5th the vocabulary (and not nearly as nice). The American College Dictionary is, by direct comparison, clearly a stripped down version of the New Century, with new words. ACD later became the Random House. Xerlome (talk) 23:15, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Untitled
Hello, I followed the external links and I see they are not appropriate. In the best case they only forward the link to archives.org. I propose to remove the links. --186.188.141.236 (talk) 04:23, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
 * I reverted your changes, as both links work fine for me.-- Auric    talk  16:04, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Full text at Wordnik?
The "External_links" section of the article says that"It is also available in full-text form at Wordnik."

However, as you can see from this "wikitext source" version of that sentence, "", the URL for that phrase "in full-text form" simply points to the main page for the Wordnik web site -- that is, http://www.wordnik.com/ !

I suspect that the Century Dictionary "in full-text form" is no longer available there (at Wordnik), or else that it is hard to find. I went there, (March 25, 2015) and I could not find it.

I don't think the highest priority is to change the sentence, to stop saying what it says now -- since that might no longer be true. (It might be misleading). I think a higher priority is to figure out where the full-text version can be found -- either at Wordnik or elsewhere -- and update the article to be more helpful / more useful.

Any comments (or advice) would be welcome -- especially from someone who might have some "inside" knowledge of what is new at Wordnik -- ("or", any knowledge of where the full-text version can be found).

Just my 0.02. Thanks. --Mike Schwartz (talk) 21:48, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

one example (some background)
At https://www.wordnik.com/words/proctor I found (March 25, 2015) an entry that said "n. A keeper of a spital-house; a liar.".

I thought it might be a TYPO -- I could not remember ever having heard of "spital" -- as part of a compound word, nor as a stand-alone word.

(Could it be a fragment of "hospital"? That might be a TYPO...)

It was listed under the heading "from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia". That is what caused me to start looking at this article, and to start trying to find the entry (for "proctor") somewhere on-line, in an "internet" (digital) (or even, digitaized photos of printed pages) version of "The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia".

Just some background. --Mike Schwartz (talk) 21:59, 25 March 2015 (UTC)


 * There's also a link to http://www.global-language.com/CENTURY (which was there even when you wrote the above). You have to click on the little JPEG button in order to see the result, but it's very convenient. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 10:46, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

Do we need the list of archive.org files et cetera?
Do we really need the tables of links to the various digitized files? There was already a link to http://www.global-language.com/CENTURY/ which is much more convenient! I didn't see that at first and used the archive.org link, and it took a long time (on my computer) to find the word I wanted. So it's a distraction from the more convenient link at global-language.com. And if we do keep the tables, why are there sometimes two or three links for a given section? Eric Kvaalen (talk) 10:46, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

Ten-volume edition mentioned in "The New Century Dictionary."
The preface to The New Century Dictionary (1927) says, "The original work, in its latest edition, [...], is bound, in the usual form, in ten large quarto volumes" (p. iii). .