Merriam-Webster is an American company that publishes reference works and is best known for its dictionaries of the English language. Its lineage traces directly to Noah Webster, the American lexicographer whose pioneering dictionaries of the early nineteenth century sought to establish a distinctly American form of English.
After Webster's death in 1843, the brothers George and Charles Merriam acquired the rights to his great dictionary and the unsold copies of its most recent edition. Their company, the G. and C. Merriam Company, revised and expanded the work and built it into the leading American dictionary brand.
Over the following century and a half the company produced a long succession of collegiate, unabridged, and specialized dictionaries, along with thesauruses and other language references, that became fixtures in American homes, schools, offices, and newsrooms.
The company is today a subsidiary of Encyclopaedia Britannica and has extended its authority to the digital world, with its online dictionary and word resources among the most consulted in the United States.
The Merriam-Webster name remains synonymous with English-language lexicography in America, and its judgments on spelling, meaning, and usage carry wide influence.
