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Welcome to THIS IS AMERICA, in VOA Special English. I'm SteveEmber.

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And I'm Phoebe Zimmermann. This week -- a look inside the worldof dictionaries.

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If you call someone "fat," spelled F-A-T, it means overweight.But if you call someone "phat," spelled P-H-A-T, it means highlygood looking. Some dictionaries now include this word as slang.

The editors of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary explainedhow it reached their Eleventh Edition published last year.

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The editors read everything they can to search for new words andmeanings. They keep electronic records. They also record words onindividual citation cards. Over the years, their company hascollected more than 15,000,000 citations. Editors continuallyconsider and reconsider them for placement in their dictionaries.

The editors found enough uses of "phat" over time to judge theword to be popular and long lasting. So they added it to the morethan 225,000 explanations of words and phrases in the Collegiate.

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One of the early uses of "phat" that they found in print appearedin a magazine in 1994. A writer used it in relation to hip-hop musicto mean excellent.

But usage can change by the time a word appears in a dictionary.This is especially true of slang. Some teen-agers say phat is an oldword already.

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Many of the 10,000 new words in the Eleventh Edition of theCollegiate Dictionary involve computers. Among them is the termdrag-and-drop. This means to move a computer file across a screen.

Technology terms like this are an example of how dictionariesshow the influence of the times. Another example is the word"chairperson." It first appeared in the Random House Webster'sCollege Dictionary in the nineteen-seventies. It recognized thatwomen as well as men serve as leaders.

"Carjacking" entered dictionaries in the 1990's. To carjack meansto take someone's car by force.

The Fourth Edition of the Webster's New World College Dictionaryalso includes "mosh." This is a way to dance to heavy metal music.Dancers crash into each other in a mosh pit in front of the band.

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Just because a word enters the dictionary does not mean it willstay. An example is "Macarena."

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Many people did the Macarena dance. The Random House Webster'sCollege Dictionary listed Macarena in 1997. But a year later, thisword disappeared ... much like the dance itself.

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There is a word that the McDonald's Corporation would like to seedisappear from the Eleventh Edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate.The word is "McJob." It is defined as a job with low pay and littlechance for improvement. It is meant to describe the sort of job thata worker who prepares fast food might have.

But the chairman and chief executive officer of McDonald's, JimCantalupo, denounced this definition. He said it insults the12,000,000 people who work for McDonald's. Also, the company itselfuses the term "McJob" in its employment program for people withmental and physical disabilities.

But editors of dictionaries say they do not invent words, theyonly record the ones people use.

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Dictionaries usually list their number of entries instead oftheir number of words. No one can say how many words are in theEnglish language. There are always new ones, and new uses for oldones. Some words disappear. Others reappear with a differentmeaning. Then there are all the new groupings of words into phraseswith meanings of their own.

College dictionaries have about two-hundred-thousand or moredefinitions. This compares with 300,0000 or 400,000 in manyunabridged dictionaries.

Today many people use the Internet to look up words. Over thecenturies, many people have looked to dictionaries to settlearguments about the correct way to use a word. But dictionariesthese days do not judge how a word should be used. They simplydescribe how people use them. and Random House, for example, havefree online services. Two others are dictionary.com andyourdictionary.com. Some online dictionaries let users also hear howto say words.

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Some dictionaries are limited to subject areas. For example,Artlex.com provides free definitions for more than three-thousandterms related to art. The address is www.artlex.com.

There are many other kinds of dictionaries online, in print orboth. There are biographical dictionaries of people and geographicaldictionaries of places.

OK, time for a question. Can you think of a word that you wouldfind in both a medical dictionary and a music dictionary, but withdifferent meanings? Keep listening -- we'll tell you what we thoughtof.

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Now we step back 400 years in the history of dictionary making.

In 1604, a British school director named Robert Cawdrey produceda book that defined about 3,000 English words. These came from otherlanguages.

More than a century later, the writer Samuel Johnson publishedwhat he called a "Dictionary of the English Language." It appearedin 1855. Then, in 1791, another Englishman, John Walker, alsoproduced a dictionary.

An American, Noah Webster, wanted to create a dictionary as goodas those others. Webster wanted to publish an American dictionary.And he did, in 1806, with a dictionary for schoolchildren. Expertssay this work launched American dictionaries as we know them today.

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Noah Webster was born in 1858 in West Hartford, Connecticut. Hebecame a teacher and studied law. He did not like the books he wassupposed to use to teach. So he created many American schoolbooks.Later he became a political journalist. Historians say that after afew years, he returned to producing schoolbooks because he got tiredof political disputes.

His first dictionary, in 1806, was called "A CompendiousDictionary of the English Language." The next year, he published ashorter version, a dictionary "Compiled for the Use of CommonSchools." A new version appeared in 1817.

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After that Webster produced what he called "An AmericanDictionary of the English Language." It was published in 1828. Itcontained 70,000 definitions. It was really two books. He correctedand enlarged it into what became known as "Webster's Unabridged."

Webster proved himself untraditional as a maker of Englishlanguage dictionaries. He included terms popular only in America. Hespelled some words in untraditional ways. The same was true for theways he listed to say words and to use them.

Some critics denounced his work. They did not understand thatNoah Webster had established the beginnings of many Americandictionaries of the future.

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Noah Webster died in 1843. Two printers in Worcester,Massachusetts, bought the rights to continue his dictionary andpublish their own. The two were brothers, Charles and GeorgeMerriam.

Today the dictionary publishers at the Merriam-Webster companynote that many of their competitors use the name "Webster." Buttheir company is able to claim a historical link.

Over the centuries, many people have looked to dictionaries tosettle arguments about the correct way to use a word. Butdictionaries these days do not judge how a word should be used. Theysimply describe how people use them. They will, however, often warnif a word is considered offensive.

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It would be interesting to know what the man whose name appearson so many modern dictionaries would think of them. They follow thespirit of the times. But so did Noah Webster. Who knows, maybe hewould have included phat, P-H-A-T, in his dictionaries, too.

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Our program was written by Jerilyn Watson. I'm Steve Ember.

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And I'm Phoebe Zimmermann. Earlier, we asked if you could thinkof a word with unrelated meanings in both a medical dictionary and amusic dictionary. We thought of one, organ. Our producer, CatyWeaver, gets the credit.

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Join us again next week for THIS IS AMERICA, in VOA SpecialEnglish.