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Chicago citation style:Webster, Noah, Chauncey A Goodrich, and John Walker. An American dictionary of the English language; exhibiting the origin. editeds by Worcester, Joseph E New York, S. Converse, 1830. Image. https://www.loc.gov/item/13014969/. APA citation style:Webster, N., Goodrich, C. A. & Walker, J., Worcester, J. E., ed. (1830) An American dictionary of the English language; exhibiting the origin. New York, S. Converse. [Image] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/13014969/. MLA citation style:Webster, Noah, Chauncey A Goodrich, and John Walker. An American dictionary of the English language; exhibiting the origin. ed by Worcester, Joseph E New York, S. Converse, 1830. Image. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/13014969/>. Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as a convenience, and may not be complete or accurate. Chicago citation style:Webster, Noah, and Noah Porter. An American dictionary of the English language. editeds by Goodrich, Chauncey A Springfield, Mass., G. and C. Merriam, 1860. Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/40023586/. APA citation style:Webster, N. & Porter, N., Goodrich, C. A., ed. (1860) An American dictionary of the English language. Springfield, Mass., G. and C. Merriam. [Pdf] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/40023586/. MLA citation style:Webster, Noah, and Noah Porter. An American dictionary of the English language. ed by Goodrich, Chauncey A Springfield, Mass., G. and C. Merriam, 1860. Pdf. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/40023586/>. Noah Webster and America's First DictionaryBorn in West Hartford, Connecticut in 1758, Noah Webster came of age during the American Revolution and was a strong advocate of the Constitutional Convention. He believed fervently in the developing cultural independence of the United States, a chief part of which was to be a distinctive American language with its own idiom, pronunciation, and style.  In 1806 Webster published A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language, the first truly American dictionary. For more information on this milestone in American reference publishing, please see Noah Webster's Spelling Reform and A Sample Glossary from A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language. Immediately thereafter he went to work on his magnum opus, An American Dictionary of the English Language, for which he learned 26 languages, including Anglo-Saxon and Sanskrit, in order to research the origins of his own country's tongue. This book, published in 1828, embodied a new standard of lexicography; it was a dictionary with 70,000 entries that was felt by many to have surpassed Samuel Johnson's 1755 British masterpiece not only in scope but in authority as well. One facet of Webster's importance was his willingness to innovate when he thought innovation meant improvement. He was the first to document distinctively American vocabulary such as skunk, hickory, and chowder. Reasoning that many spelling conventions were artificial and needlessly confusing, he urged altering many words: musick to music, centre to center, and plough to plow, for example. (Other attempts at reform met with less acceptance, however, such as his support for modifying tongue to tung and women to wimmen—the latter of which he argued was "the old and true spelling" and the one that most accurately indicated its pronunciation.) While Webster was promoting his dictionary, George and Charles Merriam opened a printing and bookselling operation in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1831. G. & C. Merriam Co. (renamed Merriam-Webster Inc. in 1982) inherited the Webster legacy when the Merriam brothers bought the unsold copies of the 1841 edition of An American Dictionary of the English Language, Corrected and Enlarged from Webster's heirs after the great man's death in 1843. At the same time they secured the rights to create revised editions of that work. It was the beginning of a publishing tradition that has continued uninterrupted to this day at Merriam-Webster. Further information on the birthplace and life of Noah Webster is available at the Noah Webster House/Museum of West Hartford History. April 14 is the anniversary of the publication of Noah Webster’s famous dictionary, which bore the deliberately patriotic title An American Dictionary of the English Language. Here is the rationale for his project from the Preface:
Noah Webster's famous dictionary, published on this day in 1828, shaped what we now consider American spelling. But ultimately, the choice of which spellings to adopt is made in the most democratic way possible: by public use and acceptance. In 1828, the United States was still a new and fragile country—far from a world power. With that in mind, it’s remarkable to note that Webster went on to make an extraordinary prediction:
Considering that the census of 1830 listed the population of the U.S. as 13 million people, Webster showed astonishing clairvoyance with this statement. In the preface of his smaller dictionary of 1806, he asserted that American English would be “spoken by more people, than all the other dialects of the language,” which also came true. He also gave a perfect linguistic rationale for a new dictionary:
It’s interesting to see that his stated goal with the dictionary was to “purify” the language, not by inventing new rules but, according to Webster, by reasserting old ones. His ideas about spelling contributed to what we now recognize as the differences between American English spellings and British English spellings—think of colour/color, or theatre/theater, or realise/realize. We usually understand Webster’s spelling reforms as a purifying zeal for simplicity and American identity, but the truth is a bit more complex. He recommended deleting the a in words like leather and feather, asserting, correctly, that the a served no phonetic purpose and that it was not present in Old English. (Covering his bets, he put both spellings side-by-side in his 1828 edition; in the 1806 he set the letter a in those words in italics.) He invoked rules of Latin phonetics to remove the k from words like publick and musick: “To add k after c in such words is beyond measure absurd.” Webster also preferred tung for tongue, not only because it was more phonetically spelled, but because it was an Old English spelling. As we know, tung didn’t catch on, nor did lether and fether. Despite his desire to control and fix the language, the ultimate decision of which spellings are adopted is made in the most democratic way possible: by public use and acceptance. Webster's struggle to embrace inevitable change in some cases and to retain recognizable convention in others mirrors the way that languages evolve: slowly and untidily. More Dictionary History
Did Noah Webster create the Webster dictionary?In 1806, Webster published his first dictionary, A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language. In 1807 Webster began compiling an expanded and fully comprehensive dictionary, An American Dictionary of the English Language; it took twenty-six years to complete.
What dictionary did Noah Webster write?In 1806 Webster published A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language, the first truly American dictionary. For more information on this milestone in American reference publishing, please see Noah Webster's Spelling Reform and A Sample Glossary from A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language.
Who was the first person to compile an American English dictionary?We'd like to take a moment to celebrate the man behind A Dictionary of the English Language, the first definitive English dictionary, the famous Samuel Johnson. A Dictionary of the English Language, also called Johnson's Dictionary, was first published in 1775 and is viewed with reverence by modern lexicographers.
What happened to Webster's 1828 dictionary online?Webster's Dictionary 1828
All of the words, definitions and examples have been preserved, but the explanations of word origins have been omitted to make using the data in a digital format more accessible. We have omitted Webster's lengthy technical introduction for the same reason.
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Noah websters american dictionary of the english language
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