Laurence Urdang

Laurence Urdang (March 21, 1927 – August 21, 2008) was a lexicographer, editor and author noted for first computerising the unabridged Random House Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1966. The dataset for the dictionary contained a 25,000,000-word corpus.

He was also the founding editor of Verbatim, a quarterly newsletter on language.

Urdang was born in Manhattan and graduated from the Fieldston School in The Bronx. He then entered the Naval Reserve at the end of World War II.

Urdang made his debut in the publishing industry as an associate editor in the dictionary department at Funk & Wagnalls and developed a vast vocabulary. Not averse to making fun of his profession, he wrote in the introduction to Misunderstood, Misused, & Mispronounced Words:

This is not a succedaneum for satisfying the nympholepsy of nullifidians. Rather it is hoped that the haecceity of this enchiridion of arcane and recondite sesquipedalian items will appeal to the oniomania of an eximious Gemeinschaft whose legerity and sophrosyne, whose Sprachgefühl and orexis will find more than fugacious fulfillment among its felicific pages.

He died on August 21, 2008, of congestive heart failure in Branford, Connecticut.