Media:  Mardi Larson, 612/683-3538


SUPERCOMPUTER' ENTERS DICTIONARY AFTER 26
YEARS, MERRIAM-WEBSTER TELLS CRAY RESEARCH

PORTLAND, Ore., Nov. 16, 1993 -- Supercomputer' has finally
made its way into the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary,
the publisher of the "official Webster's" recently told Cray
Research -- 26 years after the first recorded occurrence of
the term. 

The history behind this long delay was tracked down recently
by Cray Research public relations official Mardi Larson.  For
the Supercomputing 93 conference being held here this week,
supercomputing industry leader Cray Research adopted the
theme: "Defining Supercomputing...Again" and is giving away
pocket dictionaries imprinted with this theme.   

Larson discovered that neither the pocket dictionaries, nor the
ninth edition of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary on
her bookshelf, contained the crucial word supercomputer,'
however.

Intrigued, she went straight to the source and phoned senior
editor James Lowe at Merriam-Webster headquarters in
Springfield, Mass. 

It turned out Larson did not have the most recent version of
the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary.  The newest
edition, the tenth edition, made available just six months ago,
for the first time includes an entry for supercomputer.  
According to Merriam-Webster, they've been researching the
word for many years and just now believe that the word has
entered into the mainstream. 

"There are 10,000 new words in the tenth edition of the
Collegiate," said James Lowe, senior editor, Merriam-Webster,
Inc.  "These new words come from whatever we are
concentrating on in our culture.  Computers and high technology
are discussed more now than they have ever been."

According to Lowe, it takes time for technical words like
supercomputer, biochip, computerphobe and voice mail -- all
new words in the tenth edition -- to enter the mainstream of
our language.  The first occurrence of supercomputer was in
the Nov. 27, 1967, edition of Life Magazine, he said.  
Supercomputer made the dictionary at the same time as
"Dweeb," the first citing for which was in 1983.

"Our science editors examine college textbooks and if a word
is too technical, we won't include it in a book like the
Collegiate, which is focused on lay usages," Lowe said.  "If a
word is used frequently in the textbooks or in general
publications, it may well be necessary to include it in the
dictionary."

Lowe said Merriam-Webster's decision to include a word
depends upon frequency and range of use of the word as
determined by editors' daily reading of newspapers, books,
magazines and listening to broadcast media. 

"Really, the development of new words never stops," said
Lowe. 

Physical science editors have been tracking the word
supercomputer since the first citing in 1967 and have seen the
frequency of the word -- particularly in the daily print media --
increase dramatically throughout the past few decades.  In
1967 when Merriam-Webster editors first saw the word, they
recorded one usage that year.  Each of the following two years
saw only one usage.   In the mid 1980s, however, annual citings
of the word rose to more than 35 in 1983 in publications like
The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Business Week,
Science, Time, Fortune, U.S. News and World Report, and even
the cartoon strip Blondie. 

In the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, tenth edition,
the official definition of "supercomputer" is located between
the words "supercollider" and "superconduct" and reads: "a
large very fast mainframe used especially for scientific
computations."

At the Supercomputing 93 show, Cray Research touted its own
industry-insider definition for supercomputers: "the most
powerful, highest-quality scalar, vector, parallel, and highly
parallel computational tools for solving the world's most
challenging scientific, industrial and commercial problems."

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