Dictionary helped democracy

Dictionaries should be democratic. John Morse, president and publisher of Merriam-Webster Inc., made this argument late last month in a lecture at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo.

In his lecture, Morse commemorated the 250th anniversary of the birth of democratic American lexicographer Noah Webster (1758-1843) and introduced the new Merriam-Webster Advanced Learner's Dictionary.

"A dictionary is actually a social document," Morse said. Before Webster compiled his first dictionary, he had experience with other social documents as a political pamphleteer whose tracts influenced the writing of the U.S. Constitution and urged its ratification.

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Date: 30 Nov 2008