Dictionary Used by the Guardian

To: The Universal House of Justice
Date: 8 December 1997
From: Research Department

Dictionary used by the Guardian

The Research Department has considered the questions raised by Mr. ..., in his email message dated 9 October 1997 on behalf of the National Teaching, Enrollment and Consolidation Institute in Alaska. Mr. ... states that the curricula provided by the Institute would be “more meaningful to the students if definitions are provided for words used in the quotes being studied”. To this end, he would like to know “what English dictionary or dictionaries the Guardian used most often in his work”. … We reply as follows.

Regarding the dictionary most often used by the Guardian, we have found a statement in a communication dated 23 June 1982, from the Universal House of Justice to a department at the Bahá’í World Centre, that Amatu’l-Baha Ruhiyyih Khanum has advised:

...that the English dictionary to which the beloved Guardian habitually referred was “Webster’s New International Dictionary of the English Language”, second edition, unabridged, 1934, London G. Bell and Sons Ltd., Springfield, Massachusetts, R. and C. Merriam Co. We presume that if there were two versions published, one American and one British, it will have been the British one that the Guardian used.