Thomas Heber Orr, the Evaporating Editor

Abstract

ABSTRACT:In or about 1858, Webster's Improved Dictionary of the English Language was published and printed by William Mackenzie of Glasgow, claiming on its title page that it was "A NEW EDITION, CORRECTED, IMPROVED, AND ENLARGED BY THOMAS HEBER ORR, Discoverer of the Process of Primitive Wordgrowth." It contained a Preface, nominally by Orr, together with his "New Theory of Etymology." A comparison of this with a later version of Webster's Improved Dictionary of the English Language, which made no mention of Thomas Heber Orr and omitted both the Preface and the description of "the Process of Primitive Wordgrowth," together with other materials suggests that Orr was neither the editor of the dictionary nor the discoverer of this unconvincing theory of etymology, and that Mackenzie was responsible for the whole thing.