Browse Items (18 total)

This advertisement proclaimed: “Over 155,000 sets of The Century Dictionary & Cyclopedia & Atlas have been sold . . . . These volumes . . . are consulted A MILLION TIMES A DAY!” Purchasers were admitted to an institution of higher learning: “The…

In 1914, a special one-volume version of the Century was produced on ultra-thin India paper, with corduroy covers. It was made to lie flat, with a highly flexible spine that would form itself into an upside-down U. It is undoubtedly the thickest…

The OED’s American counterpart was Whitney’s Century Dictionary, now little remembered outside lexicographic circles. The plan of the work was threefold: (1) to construct a general dictionary “serviceable for every literary and practical use”; (2) to…

William Dwight Whitney, a Yale linguist and Sanskrit scholar, was a major force in American lexicography. At Noah Porter’s instance, he had contributed to Webster-Mahn. He had also written several books on linguistics. His touchstone about…

In later editions of his dictionary, Bellows noted that nom de guerre means “pseudonym: fictitious.” Then: “Nom de plume is rarely used in French.” So he capitalized on Twain’s letter, even if the “pious aspect” comment of the Twain letter dissuaded…

Twain’s letter bears a connection to one of his lesser-known short stories, “Paris Notes”: “When the minister gets up to preach, he finds his house full of devout foreigners, each ready and waiting, with his little book in his hand—a morocco-bound…

If you’re drawn to both pseudonyms and Gallicisms, how do you know whether you use a nom de plume or a nom de guerre? If you’re Mark Twain, you ask the author of a French–English dictionary who inquired whether you’d like to have his book: “I shall…