While the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary notes first use of the term heterosexism as having occurred some time in 1972, the first published use was in 1971 by gay rights activist, Craig Rodwell.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary notes that the first known use of trickle-down as an adjective meaning " relating to or working on the principle of trickle-down theory " was in 1944, while the first known use of trickle-down theory was in 1954.

According to Merriam-Webster, the first use of the term " snail mail " was in 1983.

Merriam-Webster gives a usage note on its entry for " hopefully "; the editors point out that the disjunct sense of the word dates to the early 18th century and has been in widespread use since at least the 1930s.

It was reported that, in response to this concern, lexicographers for the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary lowercased the actual entry for the word, google, while maintaining the capitalization of the search engine in their definition, " to use the Google search engine to seek online information " ( a concern which did not deter the Oxford editors from preserving the history of both " cases ").

According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, the term dates from 1706 and is defined as " a person who adheres strictly and often excessively to a tradition ", especially " one preoccupied with the purity of a language and its protection from the use of foreign or altered forms.

Merriam-Webster states that the word is of Middle English origin, and the first recorded use was in the 14th century.

" ( cited from Oxford English Dictionary ( OED )); and furthermore, Merriam-Webster state that the first known use of the term was prior to the 12th century.

Then, after consulting Merriam-Webster, he corrected the spelling of the term to " andragogy " and continued to make use of the term to explain his collection of ideas about adult learning.

Though the practice of externship dates back to the medieval Bimaristan hospitals, the term externship has a first known use date of 1945 in the Merriam-Webster dictionary.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary records the first application of the name Chicken Little to ' one who warns of or predicts calamity, especially without justification ’ as dating from 1895, although idiomatic use of the name significantly predates that attestation.

In the United States, the term has come to be used by both the right and left to describe political opponents, with Stephen Perrault of the Merriam-Webster dictionary suggesting that the term has " connotations of idleness, of useless talk, that the noun ' chatter ' does.

The American Heritage Dictionary and the Merriam-Webster Dictionary both define rock and roll as synonymous with rock music.

" However, Merriam-Webster. com shows a hard th, as in " thing " and " both.

Dictionaries are not always consistent in this, particularly when the secondary stress would come after the primary – for instance the foil of counterfoil is transcribed with secondary stress in Merriam-Webster dictionaries but not in the OED, although both of them assign secondary stress to the counter of counterintelligence.

The Compact Oxford Dictionary lists the phrase as only “ British ”, and the Merriam-Webster online dictionary does not list it at all.

R. W. Burchfield, editor of The New Fowler ’ s Modern English Usage, has written that it ’ s only a matter of time before this practice becomes standard English: “ The process now seems irreversible .” Merriam-Webster ’ s Collegiate Dictionary ( 11th ed.

* 2007: According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, " Myth: " 1 a: a usually traditional story of ostensibly historical events that serves to unfold part of the world view of a people or explain a practice, belief, or natural phenomenon.

Consensus is defined by Merriam-Webster as, first, general agreement, and second, group solidarity of belief or sentiment.

According to Merriam-Webster and the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word " molecule " derives from the Latin " moles " or small unit of mass.

In 1931 the Merriam-Webster dictionary adopted the word " Rube Goldberg " as an adjective defined as accomplishing something simple through complex means.

* The Merriam-Webster new book of word histories ( 1991 )

Today, the meaning of the word still has differing meanings as shown in the Merriam-Webster definition.

On August 14, 2012, the word Life Coach was listed for the first time in the mainstream Merriam-Webster ’ s Collegiate Dictionary.

In 2008 the word soju entered the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, Merriam-Webster dates the word's appearance in the American English lexicon at 1978.

Merriam-Webster, the Oxford dictionary and other sources define it as a shortened version of the word fanatic.

Merriam-Webster traces the word to 1841.

" Merriam-Webster dates the origin of the word to 1946.

On July 10, 2007, Merriam-Webster announced it would induct the word smackdown into Webster's Dictionary.

( Merriam-Webster ) Petard remains a French word meaning a firecracker today ( in French slang, it means a handgun, or a marijuana cigarette, and it is also the basis for the word for firecracker in several other European languages ).

This 45-letter word, referred to as P45, first appeared in the 1939 supplement to the Merriam-Webster New International Dictionary, Second Edition.

Merriam-Webster has a letter from a professional editor dated May 5, 1923, in which it is stated that " I never find any other spelling of this word than c-spelling.

According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary the word assessment comes from the root word assess which is defined as:

Just as logical an explanation, however, can be found in the common Merriam-Webster dictionary where the word has meant " overly or unattractively small " since the 1880s ( McCullagh 2008 ; Merriam-Webster 2011 ).

According to Merriam-Webster the word was first used in 1928.

" according to Merriam-Webster, sanatorium is the older word, from 1839

" His name became synonymous with " dictionary ," especially the modern Merriam-Webster dictionary that was first published in 1828 as An American Dictionary of the English Language.

Philip Babcock Gove, an editor at Merriam-Webster who became editor-in-chief of Webster's Third New International Dictionary, wrote a letter to the journal American Speech, fifteen years after the error was caught, in which he explained why " dord " was included in that dictionary.

The Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary says that English got it from French and that its first known appearance in English writing was in 1670.

Following the purchase of Merriam-Webster by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. in 1964, a three-volume version was issued for many years as a supplement to the encyclopedia.

A CD-ROM version of the complete text, with thousands of additional new words and definitions from the " addenda ", was published by Merriam-Webster in 2000, and is often packaged with the paper edition.

Indeed, further revisions by Merriam-Webster came to have little in common with their original source, while the Universal, for example, was minimally revised and remained largely out of date.

Merriam-Webster, which was originally the G. & C. Merriam Company of Springfield, Massachusetts, is an American company that publishes reference books, especially dictionaries that are descendants of Noah Webster's An American Dictionary of the English Language ( 1828 ).

" It was added to the Oxford English Dictionary on June 15, 2006, and to the eleventh edition of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary in July 2006.

" ' Fastback ' was first recognized as a definition by Merriam-Webster in 1954, many years before the term ' hatchback ' was popularized and entered the dictionary in 1970.

During the Tudor period, the scribal abbreviation for þe was ( or " þ < small >< sup > e </ sup ></ small >" with modern symbols ); here, the letter < þ > is combined with the letter < e >.< ref > Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary,

ADC then-communications director Hussein Ibish wrote that the extended definition trivialized the “ very concept of anti-Semitism ” and “ smears and impugns the motives of all those who support the human and political rights of Palestinians .” A Merriam-Webster company spokesman stated that the older definition was not supported by current usage and probably would be dropped with publication of a new unabridged version by 2010.