Henke 2022m

Using English Dictionaries: Merriam-Webster is Good

Kevin R. Henke

September 15, 2022

As discussed in Henke (2022k), Mr. Lundahl needlessly insults people that use the Merriam-Webster dictionary. In an email on May 16, 2022 (6:58 AM US Eastern time), Mr. Lundahl states:

“Your view on what's acceptable spelling is purely Merriam Webster Puritanism./HGL”

In yet another email on May 17, 2022 (12:41 PM US Eastern Time, Mr. Lundahl again senselessly insults the Merriam Webster dictionary and the millions of good people that find it useful:

And, for the future, I am not sure whether I shall write "carreere" instead, but the requirement to write "career" reminds me so of people telling Tolkien that "dwarves" is a misspelling or that "helms too they chose" is incorrect English. To me those are Barbarians without letters. Especially if they are half-educated enough to cite Merriam-Webster. [my emphasis]

Actually, Mr. Lundahl has no basis to dismiss the validity of Merriam Webster’s dictionary. Over 300 million Americans speak English and Merriam-Webster’s is one of the most popular, if not the most popular, dictionaries in the USA. Paper copies of the dictionary are widely affordable. Its definitions are generally concise, accurate, contemporary, and available for free on the Internet.

Nevertheless, Mr. Lundahl’s stubborn unwillingness to spell “career” and many other words correctly indicates that he really doesn’t care about properly communicating with our readers or even what his preferred Oxford English Dictionary actually says about the outdated spellings and definitions of “carreer” and “carreere” that he insists on using (Henke 2022k; Henke 2022L). Mr. Lundahl just wants to spell words anyway he wants and his readers will wonder why he doesn’t know how to use a spell checker.

Yet, at the same time, Lundahl (2022h) uses Wiktionary.com for a definition of nondecisive. Why does he think that Wiktionary is more reliable than the Merriam-Webster dictionary that has been serving the US and other English users since 1847?