Adam Cohen: According to Webster: One Man's Attempt to Define 'America'
When Noah Webster published "A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language," purists were horrified. Webster Americanized the British spellings in Samuel Johnson's famous dictionary, turning "defence" and "honour" into "defense" and "honor," and dropping the "k" from "musick." Webster included new American words like "subsidize" and "caucus," and left out hoary Britishisms like "fishefy." John Quincy Adams, the future president, was shocked by the "local vulgarisms," and doubted that Harvard, of which he was a trustee, would ever endorse such a radical "departure from the English language."
Webster's "Compendious Dictionary," which was published 200 years ago this month, defied the skeptics to become a success, and it was the forerunner to his much larger, and classic, 1828 "American Dictionary of the English Language." Webster is remembered today almost exclusively as America's great lexicographer, but he was also a founding father of the first rank. The dictionaries he wrote were actually an attempt to help shape the kind of nation America would become.
Webster was a brilliant polymath, in the style of Ben Franklin. He is called "the father of American copyright law" for his successful campaign to win protection for his writings; "the first historian of epidemic disease" for his pioneering research on yellow fever; and "schoolmaster to America" — the title of a 1936 biography — for his enormously influential spelling and reading books.
His great passion, though, was politics, and he held many views that now seem surprisingly modern. He kept religion and God out of his spelling books. He argued that the Constitution should include universal compulsory education and abolish slavery. And he helped create, in Connecticut, one of the earliest worker's compensation systems.
When the new nation formed, British culture was still dominant, and it was not yet clear what it meant to be American. Webster thought it was vital to shake off "foreign manners" and build an independent national culture. "Nothing can be more ridiculous," he wrote, "than a servile imitation of the manners, the language and the vices of foreigners." He believed that his dictionaries could contribute to this homegrown culture by reflecting the language that Americans were actually speaking. It was especially important, he thought, for America to define its own institutions. "No person in this country will be satisfied with the English definitions of the words congress, senate and assembly, court, &c," he wrote in the preface to the 1828 dictionary.
Webster's other political purpose in writing his dictionaries was promoting national unity. He was disturbed to find, in his travels, that Southern whites, blacks, old-line Yankees and newly arrived immigrants were in many cases literally unable to talk to each other. He believed a "federal language" could be a "band of national union." ...
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Webster's "Compendious Dictionary," which was published 200 years ago this month, defied the skeptics to become a success, and it was the forerunner to his much larger, and classic, 1828 "American Dictionary of the English Language." Webster is remembered today almost exclusively as America's great lexicographer, but he was also a founding father of the first rank. The dictionaries he wrote were actually an attempt to help shape the kind of nation America would become.
Webster was a brilliant polymath, in the style of Ben Franklin. He is called "the father of American copyright law" for his successful campaign to win protection for his writings; "the first historian of epidemic disease" for his pioneering research on yellow fever; and "schoolmaster to America" — the title of a 1936 biography — for his enormously influential spelling and reading books.
His great passion, though, was politics, and he held many views that now seem surprisingly modern. He kept religion and God out of his spelling books. He argued that the Constitution should include universal compulsory education and abolish slavery. And he helped create, in Connecticut, one of the earliest worker's compensation systems.
When the new nation formed, British culture was still dominant, and it was not yet clear what it meant to be American. Webster thought it was vital to shake off "foreign manners" and build an independent national culture. "Nothing can be more ridiculous," he wrote, "than a servile imitation of the manners, the language and the vices of foreigners." He believed that his dictionaries could contribute to this homegrown culture by reflecting the language that Americans were actually speaking. It was especially important, he thought, for America to define its own institutions. "No person in this country will be satisfied with the English definitions of the words congress, senate and assembly, court, &c," he wrote in the preface to the 1828 dictionary.
Webster's other political purpose in writing his dictionaries was promoting national unity. He was disturbed to find, in his travels, that Southern whites, blacks, old-line Yankees and newly arrived immigrants were in many cases literally unable to talk to each other. He believed a "federal language" could be a "band of national union." ...