Funk, Isaac K(auffman) (1839–1912)

US lexicographer and publisher, responsible for the publication of several religious periodicals and secular reference works. His publications include the Homiletic Review and Voice, an influential temperance periodical, and the Literary Digest, which he founded in 1890. He planned, supervised, and served as editor-in-chief of the unabridged dictionary, Standard Dictionary of the English Language (1893), and of the New Standard Dictionary of the English Language (1913), which he had nearly completed before his death.

He was born in Clifton, Ohio, and served as a Lutheran minister from 1861 to 1872. He resigned from the ministry to travel, later returning to editorial work for the Christian Radical. In 1876 he started his own business in New York, supplying materials and books to ministers. He was joined in 1877 by A W Wagnalls, and the company was renamed the Funk & Wagnalls Company in 1891.