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1801
- In 1801, Webster started working on defining the words that Americans use. He did this because Americans spoke and used words differently than the English, and to help people who lived in different parts of the country to speak and spell the same way.
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Apr 19, 2024 · When Noah Webster ’s first edition of the American Dictionary of the English Language was published in April 1828, it held 70,000 words, 12,000 of which were making their first appearance in dictionary form.
What many people may not know is that Webster actually wrote two dictionaries; the first, A Compendious Dictionary of the American Language, was published in 1806 in haste as two other authors had already published dictionaries. Although the initial publication was a failure, this did not deter him.
In 1793 he founded one of New York City’s first daily newspapers, American Minerva, which he edited for four years. Webster’s Compendious Dictionary of the English Language (1806), a forerunner of An American Dictionary, sparked a “war of the dictionaries” with rival lexicographer Joseph Worchester.
Mar 30, 2018 · By the time Webster began writing his dictionary in the early 1800s, public interest in his vast linguistic project had waned, and so he found fresh energy from a new source: God. While working in his study in 1808, Webster said he spoke with God, falling to his knees and confessing his sins.
His first edition, A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1806. This book offered brief definitions of about 37,000 words. It took him 22 more years to finish his American Dictionary of the English Language. When he finished in 1828, at the age of 70, Noah’s dictionary defined over 65,000 words.
The earliest dictionaries were the fruit of one person’s labor, but the 1864 Webster's Unabridged changed all of that.
Noah Webster wrote the first dictionary of American English. It was a radical attempt to foster a uniform language for the United States. Webster's first edition in 1828 contained about 70,000 entries -- some 12,000 more than had appeared in earlier vocabulary lists.
