Noah Webster is the “Webster” of Webster’s
Dictionary, first published in 1828, but this landmark achievement was only
one of his enormous contributions to the life of the early nation. Born on a
farm in Connecticut in 1758, he told his father in no uncertain terms he wanted
to be a scholar instead of a farmer. He entered Yale College at sixteen and
right after graduating began teaching. He soon realized that available
schoolbooks were from England. Well, America had become its own country, and
Webster wanted American schoolbooks for his students. Why should Americans use
British spelling, and why should there be ten different ways to spell the same
word? It was a fact that some words had as many as ten spellings at that time.
Soon, in 1783, his “blue-backed speller,” a truly American schoolbook, was
published and soon on the desks of many. He published a grammar book too, and
traveled widely to share his ideas about a common language – and, by the way, a
common government, a united country instead of isolated states. A big idea
blossomed in his mind: a dictionary that was 100% American! “And, Noah decided,
he needed to show where every word in English came from. So he studied twenty
different languages, from Arabic to Italian to Welsh.” He began his dictionary
in 1807, reading and reading. His work took him to libraries in Paris, London
and Cambridge for two years; when he returned in 1826 he still had to re-read
his two thousand pages for mistakes. In 1828, when he was seventy, the Webster's
American Dictionary of the English Language was published, for his “fellow
citizens… for their happiness and learning…” In Noah Webster & His Words,
author Jeri Chase Ferris and illustrator Vincent X. Kirsch together created a
lively pictorial biography, with word definitions cleverly tucked into
sentences for good measure. A fact not included in the book is that
dictionaries, including Webster’s, are living documents, changing and adding
words as usage by the public warrants. Today’s dictionaries include many words
that the first Webster’s didn’t, and Noah would say that is as it should
be! Ages 5-10.
