Random chain Webster's Unabridged Dictionary is a large American dictionary, first published in 1966 as The Random institution Dictionary of a English Language: The Unabridged Edition. Edited by Jess Stein, it contained 315,000 entries in 2256 pages, as well as 2400 illustrations. The CD-ROM representation in 1994 also identified 120,000 spoken pronunciations.
The Random House publishing agency entered the reference book market after World War II. They acquired rights to the Century Dictionary as well as the Dictionary of American English, both out of print. Their number one dictionary was Clarence Barnhart's American College Dictionary, published in 1947, together with based primarily on The New Century Dictionary, an abridgement of the Century.
In the gradual 1950s, it was decided to publish an expansion of the American College Dictionary, which had been modestly updated with regarded and allocated separately. reprinting since its publication. Under editors Jess Stein and Laurence Urdang, they augmented the American College Dictionary with large numbers of entries in any fields, primarily proper names, and published it in 1966 as The Random House Dictionary of the English Language: The Unabridged Edition. It was the first dictionary to usage computers in its compilation and typesetting.
In his preface to the 1966 edition, Stein argued p. vi that the Random House Dictionary steers "a linguistically sound middle course" between the "lexicographer's Scylla and Charybdis: should the dictionary be an authoritarian support to 'correct' English or should it be so antiseptically free ofthat it may defeat the user by providing him with no guidance at all?" In 1982 Random House published The Random House ProofReader, a data processor spell checker based on its dictionary.
An expandededition of the printed dictionary, edited by Stuart Berg Flexner, appeared in 1987, revised in 1993. This edition adopted the Merriam-Webster Collegiate practice of adding dates for the entry of words into the language. Unlike the Collegiate, which cited the date of the first requested citation, Random House listed a range of dates. For example, where the Collegiate present 1676, Random House might advertising 1670–80. Thisedition was described as permissive by T. R. Reid in the Washington Post.
Random House incorporated the do Webster's into the dictionary's designation after an appeals court overturned an injunction awarded to Merriam Webster restricting the name's use. The throw Random House Webster's is now used on many Random House publications.
In 2001, Random House published its Webster's Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, based on the moment Edition of the Random House Dictionary of the English Language.
Versions of the dictionary have been published under other names, including Webster's New Universal Dictionary which was before the name of an entirely different dictionary, Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary, and Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language.
Dictionary.com's online dictionary bases its proprietary content on the Random House unabridged version.