Zymosan: Fraction Of Yeast Cell Walls

The last entry in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition, 2007 version. (This has been based on the original Eleven Edition, 2003 original printing, as updated.)

A friend had, as her regular reference, a Sixth Edition, 1951 or something printing. As dictionaries go -or in dog years- this is the equivalent of driving a Model T, using an outhouse, or licking a three-cent stamp.

So I gave her my original 2003 edition and bought the newest printing from Amazon. The local Barnes & Noble college bookstore did not have one in stock and could not order it for me – you’d think the most basic school reference book would be there in heaps.

Today, Amazon send me a note asking if I would, please, review the dictionary. They did this before, with the Tenth Edition and I happily complied, seeing as how I had proved to them a previously-missing word should have been included, and was.

Writing a critique for a dictionary is not easy. Ok, the words are all in alphabetical order, or so I presume; I never really checked. They are spelled properly; again, 165,000 entries are more than I care to handle. The 225,000 definitions are, presumably, all correct, as are the lexicographical terms (did you know “gullible” is not in the dictionary?) and the dates each word came into the language. So all I can say is, “This is a well-bound book with a good typeface at an excellent price; buy it.”