Funk and Wagnalls
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Funk and Wagnalls is a publisher based in New York City. Isaac Kaufmann Funk founded the business in 1876 as I.K. Funk & Company. The firm's first publication was the Metropolitan Pulpit. In 1877, Adam Willis Wagnalls, one of Funk's classmates at Wittenberg College, joined the firm as a partner. The two changed the name of the firm to Funk & Wagnalls Company in 1890.
Prior to 1890, F. & W. published only religious-oriented works. The publication of The Literary Digest in 1890 marked a change for the firm to a publisher of general reference dictionaries and encyclopedias. The firm followed in 1894 with its most memorable publication, The Standard Dictionary of the English Language. 1912 saw the publication of the Funk & Wagnalls Standard Encyclopedia.
In 1953, the firm began to sell its reference publications through a supermarket continuity marketing campaign, encouraging consumers to include the latest volume of the encyclopedia on their shopping lists. By 1971, the company, known as Funk & Wagnalls, Inc., had been bought by Reader's Digest Association in 1965 and then again by the firm Dun & Bradstreet. In subsequent years, the publication rights to the company's reference works (aside from the encyclopedia) were acquired by other firms.
The publication rights to the encyclopedia were spun off by Dun & Bradstreet in 1983, and were bought up once more in 1990 by K-III Holdings Inc. In 1998, as part of the Information division of Primedia Inc. (renamed K-III Holdings), Funk & Wagnalls Standard Encyclopedia became the website funkandwagnalls.com. This short-lived venture was shut down in 2001. The encyclopedia exists today only as Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia, an electronic reference provided to educational institutions by the World Almanac Education Group.
Some content from the encyclopedia became a part of Microsoft's Encarta digital encyclopedia.
Pop culture trivia
- One of the catch phrases on the late '60s American television show Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In was: "Look that up in your Funk and Wagnalls".
- Also a catch phrase on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, as part of the recurring "Carnac the Magnificent" routine done by Ed McMahon and Johnny Carson, as in "These answers have been hermetically sealed in a mayonnaise jar on Funk and Wagnalls' porch since noon today!"
- A Catch phrase of Eric Cartman on the Comedy Central show "South Park" is "What the Funk & Wagnalls are you talkin' about?", is a reference to Funk and Wagnalls, used to humorously avoid the use of the work fuck so as to pass muster with Standards & Practices. [Episode Script in Which this Phrase is Used]
- Bandmember Jerry Garcia used a Funk & Wagnalls dictionary to randomly pick the words for the bandname ''Grateful Dead.
- C.J. Cregg used the line in Season 1 of The West Wing.
- Marty Sheargold and Fifi Box from the Australian radio show, The Shebang, often use the phrase "is it in the Funk & Wagnells?" to validate a point. On the 24th Feb 2006, they read excerpts of this Wikipedia article on their radio show, but stated that they do not hold a lifelong ambition to get their names to appear in a Funk & Wagnell listing, contrary to a previous version of this article.
- The phrase was also used in "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (TV series): The Complete Epic Series: Disc 1". Episode title "Planet of the Slave Girls (Part 1)". The BBC had several queries in the 1990's, when the show was repeated, asking if Buck had sworn. Funk and Wagnall's was not commonly known in the UK.
Captain Buck Rogers: "What? If you call that interfering there's something wrong with your Funk & Wagnalls."
Major Duke Danton: "I don't know what you mean by that, but how'd you like to repeat that in the flight hanger?"
Captain Buck Rogers: "I'd love to."
External links
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