14 Facts About Webster's Dictionary

Webster's Dictionary is any of the English language dictionaries edited in the early 19th century by American lexicographer Noah Webster, as well as numerous related or unrelated dictionaries that have adopted the Webster's name in honor.

Webster's Dictionary was very influential in popularizing certain spellings in America, but he did not originate them.

Webster's Dictionary spent the next two decades working to expand his dictionary.

Webster's Dictionary dictionaries were a redefinition of Americanism within the context of an emergent and unstable American socio-political and cultural identity.

Worcester and Goodrich's abridgment of Noah Webster's dictionary was published in 1841 by White and Sheffield, printed by E Sanderson in Elizabethtown, N J and again in 1844 by publishers Harper and Brothers of New York City, in 1844, with added words as an appendix.

Related searches

Webster's Dictionary's revisions remained close to Webster's work, but removed what later editors referred to as his "excrescences".

Later printings included additional material: a "Supplement Of Additional Words And Definitions" containing more than 4,600 new words and definitions in 1879, A Pronouncing Biographical Webster's Dictionary containing more than 9,700 names of noteworthy persons in 1879, and a Pronouncing Gazetteer in 1884.

Porter edited the succeeding edition, Webster's International Dictionary of the English Language, which was an expansion of the American Dictionary.

In 1900, Webster's Dictionary International was republished with a supplement that added 25,000 entries to it.

Since the late 19th century, dictionaries bearing the name Webster's Dictionary have been published by companies other than Merriam-Webster.

In 1917, a US court ruled that Webster's entered the public domain in 1834 when Noah Webster's 1806 dictionary's copyright lapsed.

The dictionary now called Webster's New Universal no longer even uses the text of the original Webster's New Universal dictionary, but rather is a newly commissioned version of the Random House Dictionary.

Noah Webster's main competitor was a man named Joseph Emerson Worcester, whose 1830 Comprehensive Pronouncing and Explanatory Dictionary of the English Language brought accusations of plagiarism from Webster.

Oxford English Webster's Dictionary, which published its complete first edition in 1933, challenged Merriam in scholarship, though not in the marketplace due to its much larger size.