Clarence L. Barnhart

Clarence Lewis Barnhart (1900–1993) was an American lexicographer best known for editing the Thorndike-Barnhart series of graded dictionaries, published by Scott Foresman & Co. which were based on word lists and concepts of definition developed by psychological theorist Edward Thorndike. Barnhart subsequently revised and expanded the series and with the assistance of his sons, maintaining them through the 1980s.

Barnhart attended the University of Chicago and studied under noted linguist and primary founder of the Linguistic Society of America, Leonard Bloomberg. Barnhart was influenced by Bloomberg's approach to learning which included developing word lists based on frequency of use and citation files based on real-world examples. In 1929 Barnhart joined book publisher Scott, Foresman & Co. eventually becoming an editor. Scott, Foresman paid for portions of his education in exchange for a promise of employment when his studies were complete. Barnhart graduated in 1930 and further undertook graduate studies from 1934-1937. Noted child psychologist Edward Thorndike approached Scott Foresman with his ideas for a children's dictionary based on his Teacher’s Word Book (1921) and upcoming Teacher’s Word Book of the Twenty Thousand Words Found Most Frequently and Widely in General Reading for Children and Young People (1932.) The Scott Foresman editors brought Barnhart in to explain Thorndike's proposal after which the project was approved. Together Thorndike and Barnhart co-created the Thorndike-Century Junior Dictionary in 1935 followed by the Thorndike-Century Senior Dictionary in 1941. A revised edition of the Junior Dictionary came out in 1942, followed by the Thorndike-Century Beginning Dictionary in 1945.

During World War II the United States Army approached the Linguistic Society of America seeking assistance to write a dictionary of military terms. Barnhart and Jess Stein (who would later go on to become the editor for the Random House Dictionary) were sent to New York and undertook the editing of the Dictionary of U.S. Army Terms (TM-20-205) for the War Department in 1944.

While in New York, Barnhart found out that Random House had plans to produce an “Americanized” version of the Oxford Concise Dictionary. Random House had acquired the rights to the Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia in the late 1930s and the Dictionary of American English in the early 1940s. Barnhart approached Random House and convinced them to let him take complete control of the project, from concept to design to implementation. This resulted in the American College Dictionary, published in 1947. This work was later used as the basis of the Random House Dictionary.

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