Third Edition of the Webster's New International Dictionary

The third edition of Webster’s dictionary is Valentine Michael Smith’s reference point as he tries to make sense of human language and objects. It gives him a way to test what he sees against definitions, but its words do not make human meanings transparent or decide how he should act. In the gun episode, the dictionary helps him recognize the weapon while leaving the crucial judgment to his own understanding of wrongness and choice.

A Tool for Learning Human Words

While immersed in the pool, Smith turns to Webster’s dictionary as a mental study task, rereading its contents from memory. The narration names the full title and specifies that the edition was published in Springfield, Massachusetts, making the dictionary a concrete part of his effort to learn human language rather than an abstract emblem of knowledge.

His study also reflects the limits of translation. Smith wonders why a familiar idea should be difficult to express even in English, and considers asking the human Old Ones how to say it. Human words, he recognizes, have shifting meanings; a dictionary can furnish definitions, but not necessarily resolve the distance between a word and what it means to someone formed by another conceptual world.

Identifying the Gun

The dictionary becomes practically useful when a man steps out of an air car carrying an object at his waist. Smith examines the object closely, comparing it with the two guns he has seen before and checking its appearance against the dictionary’s definition. The entry supports his identification: he becomes almost certain that it is a gun, and then confirms that it is one.

Yet the definition is not enough to explain the object’s full significance to him. Smith perceives the gun’s wrongness as well as its shape: he looks down the barrel, understands how it must function, and experiences wrongness staring back at him. The dictionary helps him name the thing; it does not neutralize the moral force he senses in it.

Knowledge and Judgment

Smith considers making the gun disappear before its carrier has fully emerged from the car. He believes he should act, but remembers Jubal’s instruction not to do this to a gun until Jubal says the time has come. The dictionary has helped establish what the object is, while prior instruction and Smith’s perception of wrongness bear on what to do about it.

He therefore treats the moment as a cusp of necessity and waits, trying to understand the whole situation before acting. Later, after he has made the armed men and their air cars disappear, he returns to his submerged study and resumes the dictionary sequence around “Sherbet” and “Tiny.” This return places lexical learning beside an unresolved moral experience: the reference work remains his chosen task even when its definitions cannot contain the consequences of what he has done.