Idiomatic Phrases Described as Usages of Spoken English in American Collegiate Dictionaries

In this article I examine the development of spoken English by analyzing the treatment of idiomatic phrases in American collegiate dictionaries in the 1940s and 50s, because one of the collegiate dictionaries boasts an unprecedented attention to colloquialisms, slang, and the informal and vernacular words in previous general desk dictionaries. Nowadays, it is feasible for lexicographers to include spoken English in dictionaries due to the availability of large electronic spoken corpora. However, in earlier periods, the absolute dominance of written English in adult monolingual dictionaries meant their compilers were ignoring vernacular in general use. I compare three collegiate dictionaries: Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary (6th ed.), American College Dictionary, and Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language (college edition), and observe a significant increase in the coverage of idiomatic phrases described as spoken in one of the collegiate dictionaries. I aim to explore the reasons for the sudden and dramatic increase in idiomatic phrases described as spoken English in collegiate dictionaries in the 1940s and 50s. I highlight two underlying reasons for this increase: the influx of descriptivism and the bidirectional choice between dictionary compilers and users.