Noah Webster spent a lifetime (1738‐1843) taming disorders of vocabulary and anarchies of usage, and when his “American Dictionary of the English Language” came out just 150 years ago, he considered his struggle victorious—he had domesticated English.
In this anniversary year, with his dictionary long since absorbed into larger and even greater works, he is remembered as the father of American lexicography, his very name synonymous with “dictionary.” To mark the great year, the Noah Webster Foundation, which cares for the great man's birthplace in West Hartford, Conn., hopes to have an exhibition there from October through December. It may even display the desk where Webster drudged.
A man of severe mien and stubborn industry, Webster divided his allegiance between conservatism and audacity. Long after the fashion changed, he went about in black knee breeches and black silk stockings: long before America gained its cultural independence, he fought to free the nation from what he termed blind and servile veneration of European authorities.
“America must be as independent in literature as she is in politics,” he declared, as famous for arts as for arms.”
Until Webster's assault, the great lexical authority was Samuel Johnson’ 1755 dictionary, a work Webster condemned because:
¶Many of its words were not English —such as, adversable, adyesperate, adjugate, agriculation, abstrude, injudicahle, spicosity, crapulence, morigerous, tenebrosity, balbucinate, illachrymable.Continue reading the main story
¶The likes of Shakespeare used them and vulgarities abounded — fishify, jackalent, parma‐citty, jeggumbob, conjabble.
¶Definitions showed “want of discrimination.” Fraud, for example, was defined as deceit, cheat, trick, artifice, subtility and stratagem, though one could use tricks, artifice, subtility and stratagems without fraud and could be deceived without being defrauded.
¶As to etymology, there were hardly words to qualify it.
Webster's own roots were in a Connecticut farm childhood. Hoping to inspire youth with an abhorrence of vice and a love of virtue, he struggled to make a living as a rural schoolteacher. To improve his own condition he eventually studied law, even practiced for a while, but his heart belonged less to righting wrongs than to writing right. He therefore compiled a spelling hook designed to reform pronunciation and syllabication and to “extirpate the improprieties and vulgarisms . . . the abuses and corruptions.” Between 1783 and 1900 his spelling text sold some 70 million copies, endowing its creator with the inalienable right to he known as America's Schoolteacher. Webster consolidated the right with a grammar (1784), following his principle that “grammar is founded on language, and not language on grammar,” and then with a reader, an anthology comprised mainly of American selections and thus suitably nationalistic as well as moralistic.
Despite his faith in ‘Calvinism, Webster found that temporal rewards eluded him. He was a dismal businessman; he was forever signing away future rovalties in exchange for pittances of ready cash.
Determined to right the balance, he pioneered in the delicate humiliations of the author's tour, lecturing on Language while lobbying for copyright protection. attacking the competition while puffing his own product. Scientific work might attract attention, he said, but it cast l’ght only on an obscure study, while his humble spelling volume, for example “like a star, casts its beams equally upon the peasant and the monarch.”
In his glosses, modesty was rarely underlined. When a critic objected to mistakes in the spelling book, Webster said he had published it “for real scholars to criticize and for fools to carp at.” He was repeatedly castigated for insufferable vanity and even ridiculed as “coxcomb general of the United States.”
A Flexible Lexicographer
Benjamin Franklin consulted him about alphabet reform; George Washington sought his advice on pedagogy; Jefferson dismissed him as “a mere pedagogue of limited understanding and very strong prejudices and party associations.” Webster blithely continued to lecture on his political principles, and then some, for his interests drew him far afield. He wrote Washington:
“The approbation given to my theory of vegetable manure by so experienced and .judicious a cultivator of the earth as Your Excellency is a flattering circumstance....”
Try though he might, he was unable to cure himself of the plague endemic to lexicography—fiat vs. custom, prescription vs. passivity. if critics refused to accept popular usage, Webster argued that it was sanctioned by custom: when conservatives rejected innovation, Webster complained that people were ready to correct errors everywhere except in language.
Canons to the right of him, canons to the left of him, Webster plunged onward. His first dictionary came out in 1806, with more words than Dr. Johnson saw fit to include and some spellings he certainly would have rejected, such as imagin, catcal, soop and catastrophy.
To prepare etymologies for the larger dictionary, Webster spent 10 years cmmniling a “Synopsis of the Affinities of Twenty Languages.” To consult material unavailable in America, he borrowed $1,000 from a married daughter and went off to Europe.
The great hook had some 70.000 entries, one Webster neologism (demoralize) and a single example of the first person. illustrating the use of “witness”: “I witnessed the ceremonies in New York, with which the ratification of the constitution was celebrated in 1788.”
“Noah's Ark,” as it came to he known, proved, hardy enough to survive a deluge of criticism, hut it almost foundered when Webster's publisher, through unfortunate speculations, went bankrupt, tying up the royalties.
After Webster's death, George and Charles Merriam bought the unsold stock and went headlong into the dictionary business. The name Webster is in the public domain, but Merriam
Webster prides itself on enjoying, as one author put it, the apostolic succession. To mark this anniversary year. the company plans to donate an 1828 dictionary to the White House, where Noah's Ark could do wonders for the reigning accent.Continue reading the main story