Webster Codifies American English: A Dictionary Born

Twenty-six years of obsessive work produced the book that separated American English from its British parent. Noah Webster received copyright protection for his American Dictionary of the English Language on April 14, 1828, a two-volume work containing 70,000 entries, roughly 12,000 more than Samuel Johnson's famous British dictionary. Webster had written every definition himself, learning 26 languages including Sanskrit and Old English to trace the etymologies of words back to their origins. Webster believed that a new nation needed its own language. Born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1758, he had fought briefly in the Revolution and came away convinced that American independence required cultural as well as political separation from Britain. His earlier spelling books, published beginning in 1783, had already standardized American spelling conventions, establishing "color" instead of "colour," "center" instead of "centre," and "honor" instead of "honour." The spelling book sold an estimated 100 million copies over the nineteenth century. The dictionary was a different scale of ambition. Webster began serious work on it around 1801, spending years in isolation studying languages and compiling definitions. He traveled to libraries in Paris and Cambridge to consult rare texts. He developed his own theory of language evolution, much of which was wrong by modern linguistic standards, but his definitions were precise, practical, and rooted in American usage rather than British literary convention. He included thousands of words that Johnson had omitted, particularly scientific and technical terms. The first edition printed only 2,500 copies and sold slowly at six dollars per set, a significant price. Webster died in 1843, and George and Charles Merriam purchased the rights to the dictionary from his estate, founding the Merriam-Webster company that continues to publish it. Webster's insistence on distinctly American spellings and definitions helped forge a national linguistic identity, making his dictionary not just a reference work but an act of cultural independence as deliberate as the Declaration that preceded it by fifty-two years.