Funk And Wagnalls

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Isaac Kaufmann Funk founded the American publishing company called Funk & Company in 1875. The company changed its name to Funk & Wagnalls Company in 1877 when Adam Willis Wagnalls became Funk’s partner. The company initially published religious books but shifted to reference materials in 1890 with its first Literary Digest. The company is most well known for A Standard Dictionary of the English Language and the Funk & Wagnalls Standard Encyclopedia. The dictionary was first published in 1894 and continued to have revised editions until 1943. The encyclopedia was first published in 1912, and continued to be published throughout the 1970s. Customers could purchase volumes of the encyclopedias at their local grocery stores. Funk & Wagnalls Company was sold in 1965 to Reader’s Digest.

As a well known publisher of encyclopedias, the phrase, "look it up in your Funk & Wagnalls," referred to someone condescendingly using a large word in conversation that the other person would have to research to learn the meaning by using their encyclopedia.