Noah Webster’s first edition of the American Dictionary of the English Language, published in April 1828, included 70,000 words, 12,000 of which appearing in a dictionary for the first time.Among his aims was “to furnish a standard of our vernacular tongue, which we shall not be ashamed to bequeath to three hundred millions of people, who are destined to occupy, and I hope, to adorn the vast territory within our jurisdiction.” What follows is the preface of Webster’s dictionary, written by him in New Haven, Connecticut in that year.
In the year 1783, just at the close of the revolution, I published an elementary book for facilitating the acquisition of our vernacular tongue, and for correcting a vicious pronunciation, which prevailed extensively among the common people of this country. [Read more…] about Noah Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828
