Vol I, No 1

This is the first number of a new periodical dealing with the multifarious aspects of language and with English, in particular. For many years, friends and acquaintances who are not professional linguists have commented to me on their interest in language: they buy dictionaries and other popular books about language, do word puzzles and indulge in other word games, yet are frustrated by the lack of a publication to serve their interest. It is true that the serious, academic student of language can join academic societies to receive their periodicals and participate in their activities; but those deal with highly specialized, recondite matters. within the field of linguistics.

VERBATIM has been conceived as an informal, inexpensive periodical for the layman to serve his interest in all aspects of language. It is an experiment: if it succeeds, it will probably be expanded. We hope to continue to publish the kinds of articles you will find in this, the first issue, written in an intelligent (if popular) style by linguists and by other professional observers of the language. Your comments, reactions, and contributions are eagerly solicited. So are your subscription orders, Please see page 2 for complete information concerning subscriptions. —Laurence Urdang, Editor

Dictionaries of Hard Words Come Easy

Ramona R. Michaelis, Supervising Editor Funk & Wagnalls Standard College Dictionary

One of the major problems that faces the lexicographer at the start of a new dictionary is, quite simply, the selection of entries for definition. Of the total English word stock of some million words, the modern American “desk” or “college” dictionary includes approximately 100,000 to 150,000. Although many rare, obsolete, and archaic words are cited, the selection of entries begins with the commonest words of the language. In contrast, it is of interest to note that the earliest British dictionaries, published in the 17th and early 18th centuries, were primarily glossaries of hard words. How did this change in policy come about?

Robert Cawdrey’s Table Alphabeticall (1604), generally considered to have been the first English dictionary, claimed to teach “the true writing, and understanding of hard usuall English words, borrowed from the Hebrew, Greeke, Latine, or French, etc…with the interpretation thereof by plain English words.” This unassuming little book, containing scarcely 3000 entries, was patterned on the bilingual and multilingual dictionaries that had been appearing in Europe for more than a hundred years before Cawdrey’s time. What distinguished the Table Alphabeticall from its interlingual predecessors was that it “translated” from English to English–that is, from hard English to plain English. Nineteen years after the publication of Cawdrey’s book, an enterprising fellow named Henry Cockeram published his English Dictionarie, a three-volume work of which the second volume converted “vulgar words” into “more refined and elegant speech,” thereby completing the pattern set by the earlier dictionaries that had translated from Latin to English and from English to Latin.

Other prominent dictionaries of this period that followed the tradition of defining only the hard words were John Bullokar’s English Expositor (1616), Thomas Blount’s Glossographia (1656), Edward Phillips' New World of English Words (1658), and John Kersey’s New World of Words (1706), a revision of Phillips, later abridged by Kersey and republished as the Dictionarium Anglo-Brittanicum (1708). Each of these books enlarged the scope of the English dictionary. Bullokar, with his inclusion of “olde words now growne out of use, and divers termes of art, proper to the learned in Logicke, Philosophy, Law, Physicke, Astronomie, etc.,” was the first to list obsolete words and to indicate the field in which a technical term had application. Phillips expanded the treatment of technical terms by availing himself of the services of a large number of specialists (“Antiquities, Elias Ashmole, Esq.; Law Terms, Mr. Hern; Magick, Mr. Turner; Physick, Dr. Sparks…). Kersey revised Phillips, enlarged the vocabulary by 20,000 additional entries, and added “a whole new scientific and technical vocabulary.”

In 1721 there appeared the first dictionary that attempted to treat the entire range of English vocabulary–the common as well as the difficult words. This was Nathan Bailey’s Universal Etymological Dictionary, whose stated purpose was to give “the Derivations of the Generality of Words in the English Tongue,” in addition to “a brief and clear explication of all difficult Words.” As Bailey’s interest in etymology applied to simple as well as learned words, he became the first English lexicographer to enter and define the common words of the language. The policy set by him in this matter is followed in most modern dictionaries, and the “dictionary of hard words” is no longer the usual kind.

The impossible inkhorn terms of Anglicized Latin (e.g., adolescenturate to play the fool; basiate to kiss; obequitate to ride about) continued to clutter English dictionaries until Samuel Johnson, declaring that these had not “been seen in any book but the works of lexicographers,” wisely chose to eliminate most of them from his masterwork, A Dictionary of the English Language (London, 1755). Building on the work of Bailey as Bailey had built on that of Phillips, Dr. Johnson brought to lexicography a more realistic approach to English vocabulary, and a new thoroughness and precision of definition. “The rigour of interpretative lexicography requires,” he states in his preface, “that the explanation and the word explained, should be always reciprocal.” In this, and in all major respects, lexicography truly came of age with Samuel Johnson. On his early work was built the Oxford English Dictionary, and through his influence on Noah Webster in this country he set the pattern for the modern American dictionary.

Darn, Durn, Down, Doon, Damn

Dwight Bolinger Professor of Linguistics Emeritus Harvard University

Minced oaths are etymological landmines, and if I were a better guesstymologist I probably would not tread on this one; but if it is a coincidence it is too good to be true, so here goes.

Dictionaries list darn and durn as euphemisms for damn(ed), and most of us take the words this way, as playful substitutions on the order of cripes for Christ or jeez for Jesus. Damn has had other substitutes in its day, for instance dem(n), and there is nothing strange about the slightly thicker disguise in darn.

The question is whether darn and durn actually started life as euphemisms. If we are willing to accept a dash of dialect mixture, there was another way for them to make the acquaintance of damn, not at first with the stronger meaning of that imprecation but with its use as a watered-down intensifier.

Eugen Borst in his study of adverbs of degree (Eugen Borst, Die Gradadverbien im Englischen (= Anglistische Forschungen 10) (Heidelberg, 1902), page 52) cites examples from Wright’s English Dialect Dictionary of the word down used as an intensifier, giving the forms dahn and doon: dahn weel seure, an even doon good shot; and of course with the normal spelling down: He’s a down bad’un. He adds an American example with right down: You’re right down splendid at explaining most things. In reverse order this is standard: downright foolish. Right of course is an intensifier that has had its day, but persists in a few set phrases: right reverend, right sharp, right smart.

Given the parallel between darn-durn on the one hand and down-doon on the other, plus the uncertain status of English r when it comes at the end of a syllable, we see what may well have happened. We start with an intensifier in I’m down well sure of it, give it an r-ful spelling, pass the hybrid on to a dialect where r is pronounced, and end up with two spelling pronunciations, darn and durn: I’m darn well sure of it.

So what we have is an intensifier, down, which encounters an oath used as an intensifier, damn, the two coincidentally resembling each other. A kind of secondary synonymy grows up whereby darn = down acquires an occasional -ed so that darned matches damned as darn matches damn. A twin star can develop by fission or by capture. The latter seems to have been the process here.

If correct, this at least bestows an initial innocence on darn, however shady the later company it kept.

Editor: Laurence Urdang; Designer: Alan Laming Subscription: Domestic, $2.50 per year; Foreign, $3.00 per year. Payable in full in advance; no invoice will be sent. All copies are sent via first class surface mail; $2.00 extra for air mail. Bulk subscriptions: $50 for the first 25 subscriptions sent to the same domestic address; $1.75 for each additional subscription to that address; bulk subscriptions are sent via parcel post.

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MISCELLANEA

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Word Chains in English

Roger W. Wescott Professor of Linguistics, Drew University

One of the few types of sound-effect forms that I have never seen discussed or even referred to by analysts of the English language is the type that I call word chains. Those who like Latin may call them concatenants, and those who like Greek may call them phonopedes. But, by any name, word chains are phrases or phraselike forms that follow a “rule of threes,” as follows:

They contain three words or wordlike forms each (never less or more).

They contain one, two, or three syllables per word (never more).

Their words are linked, sound-wise, by any two of the three common types of sound-repetition as rhyme, alliteration, and word-repetition. (They seem not to be linked by the three rarer types of sound-repetition known as assonance, preliteration, and consonance–as in tid-bit, sad sack, or big lug. The reason for this may be either that these three devices really are alien to word chains or merely that too few examples of word chains have as yet been collected.)

Although word chains are phonically quite uniform, grammatically and semantically they are less so. A minority of word chains consist of meaningful common words linked, between the second and third word in each chain, by the article and. In each such chain, the three linked words are roughly synonymous. But a majority of them consist either of nonsense words or of fictional proper names. In the case of the nonsense words, there may be a form spelled -a- (pronounced like the final a in sofa) which is difficult, if not impossible, to classify in terms of familiar affixes or parts of speech.

A number of examples of word chains are shown in the table below. Many undoubtedly remain to be collected. Readers of VERBATIM may wish to report examples of their own.

syllable phrase	semantic source	type	count	phonic devices	category
healthy, wealthy, and wise	rhyming proverb	common	221	rhyme and alliteration	meaningful
slender, tender, and tall	popular phraseology	common	221	rhyme and alliteration	meaningful
stumble, fumble, and fall	political slogan	common	221	rhyme and alliteration	meaningful
shiver, quiver, and quake	horror-film ad	common	221	rhyme and alliteration	meaningful
slip, slide, or glide	Latin-English glossary	common	111	alliteration and rhyme	meaningful
inka, dinka, doo	comic refrain	common	221	rhyme and alliteration	nonsensical
abba, dabba, doo	comic war-whoop	common	221	rhyme and alliteration	nonsensical
oobie, doobie, doo	song refrain	common	221	rhyme and alliteration	nonsensical
cheery, beery, bee	song refrain	common	221	rhyme and alliteration	nonsensical
hickory, dickory, dock	nursery rhyme	common	331	rhyme and alliteration	nonsensical
rickety, tickety, tin	song refrain	common	331	rhyme and alliteration	nonsensical
sow, hoe, and harvest	agricultural text	rare	112	rhyme and alliteration	nonsensical
Rum Tum Tiger	light verse	rare	112	rhyme and alliteration	mixed
Ralph Roister Doister	drama title	rare	122	alliteration and rhyme	mixed
Rin-Tin-Tin	animal drama	dubious	111	rhyme and word-repetition	onomastic
rub-a-dub-dub	nursery rhyme	dubious	111	rhyme and word-repetition	nonsensical
high, wide, and handsome	popular cliché	dubious	112	assonance and alliteration	meaningful
hot diggety dog	obsolescent slang	dubious	131	assonance and alliteration	mixed
snap, crackle, and pop	commercial slogan	dubious	121	assonance and consonance	meaningful
Pinks, Punks, and Knuckleheads	editorial headline	dubious	113	circumsonance and assonance	meaningful
Hodge Podge Lodge	show title	extraneous but related	111	rhyme and rhyme	mixed
bippity, boppity, boo	film refrain	extraneous but related	331	alliteration and alliteration	nonsensical
kitchy, kitchy, coo	baby talk	extraneous but related	221	word-repetition and alliteration	nonsensical

INTER ALIA I.1.a

Recently, a member of the House Committee investigating the impeachability of President Nixon was interviewed on radio and television on his reaction to the transcripts of the taped exchanges between the President and his aides and associates, which had just been released. “In my opinion,” said the law-giver who is also a lawyer, “they amount to criminal conversation.” According to the dictionaries that list the entry, criminal conversation is a term in civil law meaning ‘adultery.’

sexual intercourse in American College Dictionaries

Sidney I. Landau Editor in Chief The Doubleday Dictionary

The American Heritage Dictionary (AHD) published in 1969 became the first general American dictionary to include fuck. Webster’s New World, Second College Edition (WNW), published in 1970, stubbornly omitted it, and while one may sympathize with the practical argument that its inclusion might hurt sales to schools ([it would be] “unwise” [to suffer] “the risk [of] keeping this dictionary out of the hands of some students”), the editor also argues that words of this sort are “so well known as to require no explanation.” This is disingenuous, since on those grounds thousands of other words could also be omitted, and more importantly, it is quite at variance with confident assertions about the scientific detachment of the “trained lexicographer,” who disregards “the crotchets and prejudices of individuals”–everyone’s, that is, except his own. In 1973, the Merriam-Webster New Collegiate, 8th edition (MW8), was published; the editors, having observed that the heavens had not fallen, included fuck.

As the ensuing discussion will show, the tabooness of fuck exists not so much in the supposedly coarse contexts in which it is used–pace D.H. Lawrence and other liberated lovers–as in the essential meaning which every modern man and woman professes to find entirely wholesome: sexual intercourse.

AHD defines fuck as: “Vulgar To have sexual intercourse with,” sexual intercourse as: “Coitus, especially between humans,” and coitus as: “Sexual intercourse between two human beings.” This is a circular definition, which is no definition at all. It is also illogical, for if coitus by definition includes two humans, how can it be “especially” between humans? It is obvious that even though AHD enters sexual intercourse, its decision–let us be charitable–not to define it suggests that it is regarded as self-defining. But there is no question that the phrase is a lexical unit worthy of definition: it is the only widely accepted, nonvulgar way to refer to the act essential to many forms of life, and it is fair to say that among humans there is more interest in it, more is written about it and still more imagined about it than any other subject.

AHD has four definitions of sexual: “1. Pertaining to, affecting, or characteristic of sex, the sexes, or the sex organs and their functions. 2. Having a sex or sexual organs. 3. Implying or symbolizing erotic desires or activity. 4. Pertaining to or designating reproduction involving the union of male and female gametes.” Intercourse is defined as: “1. Interchange between persons or groups. 2. Coitus”; copulate as: “to engage in coitus”; which is defined, you’ll recall, as “sexual intercourse…,” which is defined as coitus. It is odd to find a dictionary that is fearless about fuck but squeamish about sexual intercourse. It is by now obvious that such blatant circularity can hardly be an oversight, and the wistful hope that sexual intercourse is self-explanatory simply won’t do: it could refer to a discussion about sex or to any close physical embrace, neither of which conforms to the widely understood meaning of the term.

MW8’s treatment is not much better. It defines sexual intercourse as: “sexual connection esp. between humans: coitus: copulation,” but there is no entry for sexual connection, and the presumption of self-explanation is no more valid for this phrase than for sexual intercourse. The only sense of connection in MW8 that applies to the sense in which it is used in “sexual connection” is “the state of being connected.” Thus sexual connection means “the state of being sexually connected,” and could apply to any sexual contact, such as fellatio, cunnilingus, or anal intercourse. MW8 defines intercourse as: “coitus; copulation,” and coitus as: “the natural conveying of semen to the female reproductive tract, broadly: sexual intercourse.” Although this definition avoids the outright circularity of AHD’s treatment, it still does not define sexual intercourse. Copulate is defined as: “to engage in sexual intercourse,” which is defined as “sexual connection,” which is not defined; coitus and copulate lead right back to sexual intercourse. One does get the impression that the editors are not saying all they know about this subject. And this in the much-publicized climate of sexual liberation that is supposed to characterize the ’70s.

WNW pretends that the whole subject of sexual contact did not exist. It has no entry in place for sexual intercourse, though it defines coitus with nervous succinctness as: “sexual intercourse.” Copulate is “to have sexual intercourse.” At intercourse we are witness to the fullest flowering of WNW’s recognition of the act of creation: “the sexual joining of two individuals; coitus; copulation: in full, sexual intercourse.”

One could more easily excuse such inadequate treatment of a term of immense importance and broad currency if it were in accord with the treatment given other terms. Here is AHD on transformer: “A device used to transfer electric energy, usually that of an alternating current, from one circuit to another; especially, a pair of multiply wound, inductively coupled wire coils that effect such a transfer with a change in voltage, current, phase, or other electric characteristic. See step-down transformer, step-up transformer.” (The same dictionary needed but four words to define sexual intercourse!) Here is WNW on triangulation: “Surveying, Navigation the process of determining the distance between points on the earth’s surface, or the relative positions of points, by dividing up a large area into a series of connected triangles, measuring a base line between two points, and then locating a third point by computing both the size of the angles made by lines from this point to each end of the base line and the lengths of these lines.” Here is MW8 on toxin: “a colloidal proteinaceous poisonous substance that is a specific product of the metabolic activities of a living organism and is usu. very unstable, notably toxic when introduced into the tissues, and typically capable of inducing the formation of antibodies on injection.” We should all learn things we’d never dreamt of if we were told half so much about sexual intercourse.

A word about the pre-AHD books. The Funk & Wagnalls Standard/College (1st edition, 1963) has no entry for sexual intercourse and defines intercourse as: “sexual connection; coitus.” It has no entry for sexual connection, and coitus is listed as a variant of coition, which is defined as: “sexual intercourse.” Copulation is defined as: “sexual intercourse; coition.” The Random House Dictionary, College Edition (1968) (RHD) is the only college dictionary that actually defines sexual intercourse: “genital contact, esp. the insertion of the penis into the vagina followed by ejaculation; coitus; copulation.” RHD defines coitus as: “the act of sexual intercourse, esp. between human beings,” and copulation as: “sexual union or intercourse.” Intercourse is: “sexual relations or a sexual coupling, esp. coitus.” RHD’s treatment of sexual terms is almost as slight as that of the other books, but at least circularity has been avoided.

There are clearly certain advantages to avoiding the whole issue. One doesn’t have to worry about whether homosexual contact, for example, is “sexual intercourse,” and if it is, how to arrange the definition to allow for the possibility of this and other variations while still specifying the heterosexual act as the usual meaning of the term. And one may be permitted to speculate whether pleasure (not to mention appetite) ought to be included as a powerful incentive associated with the sexual act, certainly among humans and plausibly among other animals as well. Precision can indeed be dangerous, but dictionaries have not been reluctant to be precise about other subjects, and perhaps the time has come for them to make the attempt about this one.

BIBLIOGRAPHIA

Review: WORD PLAY: What Happens When People Talk, Peter Farb (Knopf, 1974)

Word Play contains a great deal more than the author’s entertaining comments on and analysis of the Marx Brothers. Divided into 16 chapters, which are grouped into five major sections, each dealing with a different aspect of language, this readable book could serve as a useful preliminary to the study of linguistics –possibly as an introductory text or as supplementary reading in secondary-school English classes. Even without such pretensions, it offers a mature point of view about many sides of linguistic theory, touching on such interesting matters as “Linguistic Chauvinism,” nonverbal communication, and the language of children. This reviewer recommends it as required reading for any who persist in pursuing unscientific prejudices about language.

ETYMOLOGICA OBSCURA

We are particularly interested in maintaining an open file of case studies of the histories of words that emphasize the regularities of language change and that reflect regularity in the growth, genesis, and reshaping of words. That is really the heart of the matter, for otherwise we should have no orderly way of viewing and recovering the core of the past around which we must build. Without the recognition of regularity we have no yardstick, no notion of what has been the main flow of history; without a picture of regularity we have no way of recognizing and measuring irregularity.

The perfect picture of regularity would see a form that has continued to the present while undergoing regular (i.e. normal and understood) changes and that reaches back in time to a point beyond which we can no longer trace history. Such forms in English are six, eight, was, water, heart, head, red, eat, freeze.

There are other words in the language of shorter pedigree, some with a vigorous life (cheese, peach, woman), others less so (shivaree, groat, snafu). Finally, there are words of totally obscure or unknown origin; that is true of dog and of a number of other household words. We can learn, nevertheless, how such words might grow up or pop up by considering cases of known growth or creation from very special circumstances.

Pygmalion

This word–the well-known name–can be used in a special and separate sense in British English, as an equivalent for the British expletive bloody. Professor T.F. Mitchell has recently cited he has kicked the-Pygmalion-bucket and abso-Pygmalion-lutely.

The history of Pygmalion ‘bloody’ would certainly be opaque to us and unyielding to the formal apparatus of linguistic analysis if we did not have contemporary eye-witness testimony. It happens that I understand the word myself only because Professor Frank Palmer, of Reading, mentioned its origin to me in conversation. Those millions who have seen the film of Shaw’s Pygmalion will remember that Liza uses the phrase not bloody likely. At the time of the original production (1938), hearing this taboo word in public on the screen transfixed and electrified most of the British public; many, apparently, went to see the film just for the thrill of hearing the word aloud in this startling fashion. Times have changed, but after that it was sufficient to use the name of the play in order to suggest euphemistically the forbidden (and now broadly and publicly current) expletive.

The expression bloody is now common coin on the telly. Perhaps it might be said that the circumstances that brought Pygmalion into being have rapidly moved it into obsolescence as the motivation for euphemism vanished.

Eric P. Hamp The University of Chicago Aberystwyth, Wales

LITTERAE

We are interested in publishing letters and exchanges of interest to our readers and welcome correspondence, particularly reactions to this, our first issue.

Letters {William Card}

Dear Sir:

Hinchingbrooke was the family seat of the first Earl of Sandwich, and when his eldest son came of an age to be awarded a title, the title chosen was Lord Hinchingbrooke. Samuel Pepys, the diarist, was adviser to Lord Sandwich in the early 1660’s and became a friend of the family. On 4 August 1666 he writes, “Up and to the office, where all the morning; and at noon to dinner, and Mr. Cooke dined with us, who is lately come from Hinchingbrooke, who is also come to town.” (The Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. Robert Latham and William Matthew, University of California Press, VII, 234.)

This is the only sentence I know of in English where a single proper noun designates at once a place and a person. Lest the reader boggle, the editors put a superscript number after who and footnotes “I.e. Lord Hinchingbrooke: see below, p. 236.” On that page we find Pepys putting it more felicitously: “And then by water to my Lady Montagu’s at Westminster and there visited my Lord Hinchingbrooke, newly come from Hinchingbrooke; and find him a mighty sober gentleman–to my great content.”

William Card Professor of English Emeritus Chicago State University

Letters {Eric Hamp}

Dear Sir:

People often wonder where words come from. I hope I won’t be interfering with the smooth flow of linguistic history by writing this note.

Back in the dim mists of ages past when my wife and I were young and reckless we were walking along the sandy shores of Lake Michigan, just enjoying the early summer day and picking up pebbles and stones. We felt their smooth roundness and admired their varied subdued colours. Feeling the smooth odd-shaped ones we mused on the Chinese habit of holding nice jade lumps just for the fun of feeling them; hand jades they called them, didn’t they? So we discovered you could also feel and stroke yourself with an eye jade, just right for the eye socket, or a nose jade, cool along the nostril, or a funny horseshoe wrist jade. We ended up the day taking home a nice longish waisted foot jade.

Splendid for resting your arch on the floor of the shower; we’ve had one in our shower almost ever since. When I sit and write or type I like to set my foot or both feet on a foot jade. This past autumn, arriving in Aberystwyth for a year of writing and research, my daughter Julijana soon appeared from a walk along the sea front and the beach with a fine grey foot jade which she presented me with; I’m comfortably propped on it right now.

And just the other day it happened again, for about the fourth time. My 7 year old son Alexander and his friend Chris were playing here near my table. “What’s that?!” said Chris in his fine clear Welsh-English tone. “Oh,” said I, “It’s a sort of stone that you can keep, a nice clean one you know, that you can put under the table, or anywhere, that you can put your…” Alexander, who often gets impatient with the deficiencies and ignorance of Chris who is after all more than 6 months his junior, interrupted me with crisp finality: “Why Chris, that’s just a foot jade.”

Nothing more was said until the next subject shifted the conversation.

Eric P. Hamp University of Chicago Aberystwyth, Wales

INTER ALIA I.1.b

Steve Emmons, L.A. Times staff reporter, writes in a front-page article on March 15, 1974, passim:

“…Safety First lives in Leisure World, Sea Beach…. ‘Every time I get a traffic ticket, I get a column in the newspaper…. I’ve been in Ripley’s (Believe It Or Not) three times. My sister [June] has been in only once.’…A Mr. Belcher changed his name to Belshay…Mr. Peachy [to] Peche…. Judith Bosworth sent to the Dept. of Motor Vehicles for personalized license plates. They came back ‘JUDY 13’ because 13 Judys had filed before her. [Whereupon she changed her name, legally, to Judy Thirteen.] …Jean Sippy… was recently divorced but still calls herself Mrs. Sippy…. Paul Butcher is a veterinarian in Orange County… Howard Bonebrake, a dentist…Dr. Skinner, a surgeon… Dr. Lantz, a general practitioner…Drs. Gumm and Root, dentists…Judge Law and Judge Judge dispense justice in Santa Ana…. Lt. Lynch is a Long Beach police officer…. Lt. Justus has the law well in hand in Anaheim…. Fire Chief Sam Sparks settles burning issues in Garden Grove…. Did Kathleen Sagely and Karen Toogood get straight A’s at Dana Hills High School because it sounded right?”

NOTA BENE

VERBATIM is pleased to offer its American readers special prices on the books listed below. The price in parentheses is the regular list price, that at the right, your price, postpaid, in the U.S. Payment in full must accompany your order.

H. L. Mencken, The American Language, vols. 1, 2, 3 ($15.00 ea. ) $11.50 ea. H. L. Mencken, The American Language, Abridged Ed., ($12.95) $9.50 Peter Farb, Word Play (8.95) $7.00 (A review of this book appears in this issue on page 3.) J. Stein & L. Urdang, The. Random House Dictionary, Unabridged Ed. ($30.00) $22.50 L. Urdang & S. Flexner, The Random House Dictionary, College Ed. ( $7.95) $6.00 L. Urdang, The N.Y. Times Everyday Reader’s Dictionary of Misunderstood, Mispronounced, Misused Words ($7.95) $6.00

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