Our Dictionary
April is one of those months that is known for beginnings and fresh starts as Spring across the Western world really kicks into high gear and among the Easter Baskets and April showers (that of course bring May flowers), its was also the start of something new and unique, something started right here in the United Sates and the start also of Americans separating themselves from the British we had fought for our freedom and independence.
And that is the fact that the first copy of Noah Webster’s An American Dictionary of the English Language received its copyright in April of 1882 and soon would become a well known book by the end of the 1830’s and by modern times would be a household name and synonymous with the written English language in America.
Besides serving as a member of the Connecticut House of Representatives as well as a graduate of the prestigious Yale University, Webster’s passions also lead him to write the three volume A Grammatical Institute of the English Language, consisting of a grammer, spelling and reader, which he wrote after seeing the state of America’s schools at the time, which were mainly one room schoolhouses with very little in the way of school text books to teach from.
This would pave the way for Webster to create the countries very first dictionary, A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language, which was released in 1806, Webster then began writing a more full-bodied version of the book in 1807 but it was not until April of 1882 that this second English teaching aid was available to the public.
During this two decade plus time span, Webster would learn and dissect twenty-eight languages and also changed the face of the written word in America by choosing simpler, easier to pronounce version of words that had before this time had multiple spellings and pronunciations, this is the reason you may see the word ‘color’ written as ‘colour’ in an English published book or publication.
The first edition only sold less than three-thousand copies however and Webster would have to mortgage his house in able to write, revise and print the two volume second edition of the dictionary with the help of his son, which was at the time the most comprehensive collection of words in the English language (with an American spin) in the world.
Before his death Noah Webster would also play a huge part in the establishing of American copyright laws and the Copyright act of 1831, which was apt considering Webster had also had a hand in constructing the earlier copyright laws used in the United States prior to that act in the 1780’s.
Webster considered his life’s work in English as establishing a ‘Federal Language,’ something he felt separated the still very young nation from the British Empire the American Revolutionaries had fought so fiercely to depart.
Sadly, Webster would die in May of 1844, never seeing firsthand how deeply he helped shaped the language he slaved over and the nation that he loved. Today, Webster’s (as the Merriam-Webster dictionary) is a household name, and every American school kid is sure to have had Webster’s book or a variation of it in his or her hands.
