Unabridged - by Stefan Fatsis (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

From the author of the New York Times bestseller Word Freak, a vibrant, lively, and illuminating journey through the exotic world of Merriam-Webster, dictionaries, and language, at a time of rapid-fire change in the way we create, consume, define, and use words

Words are the currency of culture--and never more than today. From selfie to doomscrolling to rizz, our hyper-connected digital world coins and spreads new words with lightning speed and locks them into mainstream consciousness with unprecedented influence. Journalist and bestselling author Stefan Fatsis embedded as a lexicographer-in-training at America's most famous dictionary publisher, Merriam-Webster, to learn how words get into the dictionary, where they come from, who decides what they mean, and how we write and think about them. In so doing, as he recounts in Unabridged, he discovered the history and fascinating subculture of the dictionary and of those who curate and revere "one of the most basic features of our collective humanity."

Fatsis reveals the little-known story of how the brothers George and Charles Merriam acquired Noah Webster's original American dictionary and reshaped the business of language forever. Merriam-Webster became America's most successful and enduring compendium of words, withstanding intense competition and cultural controversies--only to be threatened by the power of Google and artificial intelligence today.

Delving into Merriam's legendary archives and parsing its arcane rules, Fatsis learns the painstaking precision required for writing good definitions. He examines how the dictionary has handled the most explosive slurs and the revolutionary change in pronouns. He votes on the annual Word of the Year, travels to the legendary Oxford English Dictionary, and visits the world's greatest private dictionary collection in a Greenwich Village apartment stuffed with more than 20,000 books. Fatsis demonstrates how words are weaponized in our polarized political culture--from liberal to woke to DEI--and, in a time of insurrections and pandemics, how they can be a literal matter of life and death. Along the way, he manages to write a few definitions that crack the code and are enshrined in the pixelated dictionary.

"I fell in love with the dictionary on my eleventh birthday," Fatsis writes about the full-color college lexicon he received on that day. "The dictionary projects permanence, but the language is Jell-O, slippery and mutable and forever collapsing on itself." Unabridged takes readers to the heart of an industry in flux, celebrating as it does the sheer thrill and wonder of words.

Review Quotes

Praise for Stefan Fatsis:

"An engrossing, inside look at the strange and rarefied world of competitive Scrabble. It's a pleasure to experience vicariously a level of play that I'll never achieve!"--Will Shortz, New York Times crossword editor, on Word Freak

"[Fatsis] writes with affectionate zeal about the game and the fraternity of brilliant, lonely, and otherwise dysfunctional oddballs it attracts."--New York Times, on Word Freak

"Word Freak has an impassioned subtitle, and it lives up to every word."--People

"Fatsis is a wonderful writer."--New York Times Book Review, on Word Freak

"A can't-put-it-down narrative that dances between memoir and reportage." --Los Angeles Times, on Word Freak

"Funny, thoughtful, character-rich, unchallengeably winning writing."--Atlantic Monthly, on Word Freak

"Fatsis brings drama and suspense to the game . . . His crisp reporting is enough to make the reader hyperventilate."--Atlanta Journal-Constitution, on Word Freak

"Marvelously absorbing . . . A walk on the wild side of words and ventures into the zone where language and mathematics intersect . . . Fatsis clearly doesn't regard Scrabble as just 'a board game, ' and he tells us its history in loving detail."--San Jose Mercury News, on Word Freak

"An insightful and . . . amusing look at the inner workings of pro football."--New York Times, on A Few Seconds of Panic

"[Fatsis's] sharp eye for detail and genuine empathy for his teammates make A Few Seconds of Panic exceptional."--Bob Costas

"Fatsis deftly explores how business permeates every aspect of the NFL . . . [He] is able to penetrate the players' psyches in a way that few sportswriters have."--Los Angeles Times, on A Few Seconds of Panic

"What [Fatsis] has pulled off with his modern twist on Plimpton's 1966 classic, Paper Lion, is remarkable . . . An unflinching look behind the curtain at America's most popular professional sport and the men who play it."--Minneapolis Star-Tribune, on A Few Seconds of Panic

"I've been spending some time with this book and it is *such* a delight, I can see it being a huge hit not only for me personally but for our voracious bibliophiles and readers-of-everything. It's got a long, gorgeous life on the permanent shelf ahead of it. What a joy! Thank you so much for sharing it and I hope its onramp to selling-in is fruitful and exciting, as it should be. And I love the cover!"--Camden Avery, The Booksmith, San Francisco, CA

"I really loved it. Laughed out loud so many times. Learned a lot. My new favorite word/concept is ammosexual! Talk about a bloodline into toxic masculinity (or ze-anger)--now I don't know what the hell to call anyone. I loved the reportage/journaling aspect. I felt like I was on a journey of discovery that--because of the humor and his politics--kept me engaged. My favorite chapter was "Slur." Utterly fascinating and hopeful, meaning: the participation of people through response and censure of definitions was illuminating to me. My favorite line is on page 210: "While dictionaries are in the business of validating words, not social change, sometimes the act of validating words validates change, too." Fatsis proves this to be more than occasional through his running game of comparing Merriam to the OED, etc. Who accepts what words and when."--Lucy Kogler, Talking Leaves, Buffalo, N.Y.

"A fascinating and informative look at the history of the dictionary. Fatsis artfully details the evolution of the modern dictionary from Webster's first to today's digital age. By turns serious and amusing, the reader gets an on-the-ground view of the state of the profession as the author embeds himself at the company that continues to be the gatekeeper of our language. Perfect for wordsmiths and the curious alike, Unabridged is sure to make you think of this most necessary part of our lives in a whole new light."--Cody Morrison, Square Books, Oxford, MS

"Lexicographers will devour this encyclopedic and exhaustive tour through the study, research, and record-keeping involved in dictionary compilation. Fatsis gives us just enough of his own story to frame the immense amount of information included in this volume. I loved learning the origins of so many words and the reasons behind how American language has evolved. Readers who can engage in debating semantics and grammatical intricacies will get the most fun with this, while those of us meekly pausing to look up "gerund" find a lot to like about this book. I can see parts of this book in the New Yorker already!"--Kathleen Johnson, Prairie Lights Books, Iowa City, IA

"I liked the writing style...witty, jocular and conversational. I felt I was being drawn into a conversation rather than lectured. I also appreciated the number of definitions supplied either in the text or in footnotes. Instead of having to stop and look up definitions or, worse, simply continuing to read without knowing a given word's meaning, I felt I was learning as I went. It is a book about words to be sure but it is more broadly about the history of words. Words are not static with meanings fixed at some point in time. How words enter, leave, or change in usage is another important theme. In sum, the idea of a dictionary, indeed the need for dictionaries, as a compendium of a language's, and by extension, a culture's, basic elements, words, seems, at first glance, to be universal. But the devil is in the details. And it is those details that make the book thought provoking and provocative."--Jon Grand, The Book Stall, Winnetka, IL

About the Author

STEFAN FATSIS is the author of the New York Times bestseller Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players. He is also the author of A Few Seconds of Panic: A Sportswriter Plays in the NFL and Wild and Outside: How a Renegade Minor League Revived the Spirit of Baseball in America's Heartland. His work also has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Slate, and Deadspin, and on NPR's All Things Considered. Fatsis lives in Washington, D.C.