Webster's Dictionary
The name Webster's Dictionary may refer to any of the line of dictionaries first developed by Noah Webster in the early 19th century, and also to numerous unrelated dictionaries that added Webster's name just to share his prestige. The term is a genericized trademark in the U.S. for comprehensive dictionaries of the English language.[1]
Contents
- 1 Noah Webster's *American Dictionary of the English Language*
- 2 "Webster's" dictionaries by others
- 3 Webster's Third New International Dictionary (1961)
- 4 Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary
- 5 The name Webster used by others
- 6 Competition
- 7 References
- 8 Further reading
- 9 External links
Noah Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language
produced the first comprehensive dictionary of American English.
Noah Webster (1758–1843), the author of the readers and spelling books that dominated the American market at the time, spent decades of research in compiling his dictionaries. His first dictionary, A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language, appeared in 1806. In it, he popularized features that would become a hallmark of American English spelling (center rather thancentre, honor rather than honour, program rather than programme, etc.) and included technical terms from the arts and sciences rather than confining his dictionary to literary words.
Webster was a proponent of English spelling reform for reasons both philological and nationalistic. In A Companion to the American Revolution (2008), John Algeo notes: "it is often assumed that characteristically American spellings were invented by Noah Webster. He was very influential in popularizing certain spellings in America, but he did not originate them. Rather […] he chose already existing options such as center, color and check on such grounds as simplicity, analogy or etymology".[2] In William Shakespeare's first folios, for example, spellings like center and colorare the most common.[3][4] He spent the next two decades working to expand his dictionary.
...
Impact
Lepore (2008) demonstrates Webster's innovative ideas about language and politics and shows why Webster's endeavours were at first so poorly received. Culturally conservative Federalists denounced the work as radical—too inclusive in its lexicon and even bordering on vulgar. Meanwhile Webster's old foes the Jeffersonian Republicans attacked the man, labelling him mad for such an undertaking.[12]
Scholars have long seen Webster's 1844 dictionary to be an important resource for reading poet Emily Dickinson's life and work; she once commented that the "Lexicon" was her "only companion" for years. One biographer said, "The dictionary was no mere reference book to her; she read it as a priest his breviary – over and over, page by page, with utter absorption.";[13]
Austin (2005) explores the intersection of lexicographical and poetic practices in American literature, and attempts to map out a "lexical poetics" using Webster's dictionaries. He shows the ways in which American poetry has inherited Webster and drawn upon his lexicography in order to reinvent it. Austin explicates key definitions from both the Compendious (1806) and American (1828) dictionaries and brings into its discourse a range of concerns including the politics of American English, the question of national identity and culture in the early moments of American independence, and the poetics of citation and of definition.
Webster's dictionaries were a redefinition of Americanism within the context of an emergent and unstable American socio-political and cultural identity. Webster's identification of his project as a "federal language" shows his competing impulses towards regularity and innovation in historical terms. Perhaps the contradictions of Webster's project represented a part of a larger dialectical play between liberty and order within Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary political debates.[14]