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By JAMES J. KILPATRICK
Aha! The verb “to dis” finally made it to the big leagues. Spelled with one ‘s,’ it turned up in June in two brand-new dictionaries from Random House. It means “to show disrespect for; affront,” also “to disparage; belittle.”
The editors say that “dis” is also a noun meaning “insult or disparagement; criticism,” but I’d like to see the citations. It’s hard to imagine someone saying, “Sir, I regard that as a dis!” The verb has been around for at least five years, but the makers of dictionaries are just now catching up.
The compiling and publishing of dictionaries is a big business, ranking up there with the publishing of Bibles. In an effort to improve its market share, Random House surprised the competition in April by simultaneously producing a revised and updated College Dictionary, and a new “Compact Unabridged” version of its current Second Edition Unabridged. These are handsome volumes, priced respectively at $23.95 and $50.
Random House and MerriamWebster dominate the field of English language dictionaries. M-W produced its massive Third Unabridged in 1976 with 470,000 entries; the work periodically is updated, most recently in 1993, and will be completely revised as Webster’s IV after 2000. The Tenth Edition of Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary came out in 1993.
For its pan, Random House published its Second Edition Unabridged in 1987 with 315,000 entries; the work was updated in 1993. The new “Compact Unabridged” is a lightheavyweight ver. ion of the same volume in slightly smaller typeface. A section on new words has been added, and the brief compendium of foreign
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