Webster, Noah

Webster, Noah (1758–1843), Connecticut lexicographer and philologist, after graduation from Yale (1778) began his career with the publication of A Grammatical Institute of the English Language (1783–85). The first part of this work became his famous Spelling Book, which was designed to meet American needs and long played a fundamental part in American education by its aid in standardizing spellings that differed from the English. It was so widely used that by 1890 this work, with its various revisions, had sold more than 60,000,000 copies. His attempts to obtain a copyright for his book led Webster into politics as a zealous Federalist, for his need to obtain the proper legislation in 13 states caused him to champion a strong central government that could control matters of this sort. His ideas on a federal union were set forth in Sketches of American Policy (1785). Between periods of school‐teaching and legal practice, he edited the Federalist journals American Minerva (1793–1803) and Herald (1794–1803). He also wrote graceful essays, works on economics, science, and medicine, edited the Journal of John Winthrop (1790), and, prompted by Franklin, wrote Dissertations on the English Language (1789), with radical views on reformed spelling, although his other orthographical works were on the whole traditional. His Compendious Dictionary of the English Language (1806) was a forerunner of his scholarly work, An American Dictionary of the English Language (2 vols., 1828). At the time of its publication, there raged a “War of the Dictionaries” with the rival lexicographer Joseph Worcester, but Webster's work, adding some 5000 words not before included in English dictionaries, making use of Americanisms, and basing its definitions on the usage of American as well as English writers, soon became the recognized authority. In 1840 Webster revised his work to include 70,000 words instead of the original 38,000, and it has remained a recognized American authority in the many revisions made since his death.