Webster, Noah (redirected from Noah Webster)

Webster, Noah, 1758–1843, American lexicographer and philologist, b. West Hartford, Conn., grad. Yale, 1778. After serving in the American Revolution, Webster practiced law in Hartford. His Grammatical Institute of the English Language, in three parts, speller, grammar, and reader (1783–85), was the first of a list of publications which made him for many years the chief American authority on English. The first part, often revised, was his famous Elementary Spelling Book, or "Blue-backed Speller," with which he helped to standardize American spelling. Pioneer families on the frontiers taught their children to read from it; in the schools it was a basic textbook, and in settlements and villages its lists were read out for lively spelling matches. By 1850, when the total population of the United States was less than 23,200,000, the annual sales of Webster's spelling book were about 1,000,000 copies, and the figures increased yearly. The difficulty of copyrighting his works in 13 states led Webster to agitate for many years for a national copyright law; it was passed in 1790. An active Federalist, he became a pamphleteer for centralized government and wrote his Sketches of American Policy (1785), proposing the adoption of a constitution. In 1793 he left Hartford to support Washington's administration by editing the newspaper American Minerva (later the Commercial Advertiser) in New York; he was also editor, at various times, of several magazines. Webster wrote scholarly studies on a great diversity of subjects, including epidemic diseases, mythology, meteors, and the relationship of European and Asian languages. During most of his later life he lived in New Haven, Conn., and Amherst, Mass., and was a member of the first board of trustees of Amherst College. Deriving his income from his schoolbooks, he devoted most of the rest of his life to compiling dictionaries. After his Compendious Dictionary was published in 1806, he worked on another, The American Dictionary of the English Language (1828), which included definitions of 70,000 words, of which 12,000 had not appeared in such a work before. Its definitions were excellent, and the dictionary's sales reached 300,000 annually. This work, Webster's foremost achievement, helped to standardize American pronunciation. Webster completed the revision of 1840, and the dictionary, revised many times, has retained its popularity. See also dictionary.

Bibliography

See his letters, ed. by H. R. Warfel (1953); biography by H. E. Scudder (6th ed. 1971); E. Skeel, A Bibliography of the Writings of Noah Webster (ed. by E. H. Carpenter, Jr., 1958); E. J. Monaghan, A Common Heritage: Noah Webster's Blue-Back Speller (1982).

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Webster, Noah

(born Oct. 16, 1758, West Hartford, Conn., U.S.—died May 28, 1843, New Haven, Conn.) U.S. lexicographer and writer. He attended Yale University and then studied law. While working as a teacher in New York, he began his lifelong efforts to promote a distinctively American education. His first step was publishing A Grammatical Institute of the English Language, including The American Spelling Book (1783), the famed “Blue-Backed Speller” that went on to sell some 100 million copies. An ardent Federalist, he founded two pro-Federalist newspapers (1793) and wrote articles on politics and many other subjects. He produced his first dictionary in 1806; in 1807 he began work on his landmark American Dictionary of the English Language (1828; 2nd ed. 1840). Reflecting his principle that spelling, grammar, and usage should be based on the living, spoken language, it was instrumental in establishing the dignity and vitality of American English. In 1821 Webster cofounded Amherst College. The rights to the dictionary were purchased from his estate by George and Charles Merriam, whose firm developed the Merriam-Webster dictionary series.

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Webster, Noah (1758–1843) lexicographer; born in West Hartford, Conn. The son of a dairy farmer, he graduated from Yale College in 1778 and served under his father as a private in the American Revolution. He was admitted to the bar in 1781, but earned his living for some years as a teacher. In 1783 he published the first volume of A Grammatical Institute of the English Language. This small volume, in later editions titled The American Spelling Book, became widely known as The Blue-Backed Speller. It was immensely popular and continued in use in schools throughout the country well into the 20th century. Webster was an ardent patriot and Federalist and entered into his speller many of those spelling forms that continue to distinguish American from British writing. He also worked for the passage of the first U.S. copyright law in 1790. For ten years he served as editor for Federalist newspapers in New York City, but from 1803 he devoted himself largely to the study of language. A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language (1806) established his reputation as a lexicographer, but it was the appearance of a much expanded work in 1828, An American Dictionary of the English Language, that assured his preeminence in the field. As even the title hints, Webster recognized in his dictionary American contributions to the language in both new vocabulary and the development of new meanings. Although the dictionary was his main occupation for over 20 years, he also found time for other interests, including writing works on diseases, agriculture, and scientific subjects. During a ten-year residency in Amherst, Mass. (1812–22), he helped to found Amherst College (1821) and he served two terms in the Massachusetts legislature. In his later years he continued to revise his dictionaries, campaign for unified copyright laws, and write essays. In 1833 he published a somewhat expurgated revision of the Authorized Version of the Bible. After his death, Webster's dictionary was seen through subsequent editions by his son-in-law, Chauncey Allen Goodrich.

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Webster, Noah

(1758–1843) philologist and compiler of popular comprehensive American dictionary. [Am. Hist.: Hart, 902]

See : Lexicography