Thank you, Mr. Webster

Just for the few moments it takes to read this post, please pretend it’s yesterday. I don’t mean “yesterday” in the literary sense of “back when you were four and your big brother took your Twinkie, pushed you into the mud and laughed his mean, hard laugh, thus shattering your sense of family and forever destroying your ability to trust.” No, I mean literally yesterday, April 14, 2010, because that was when I meant to write this post, but somehow the day slipped away from me. Lately, the days have been doing that with annoying frequency.

So, it’s yesterday.…

This is an important day for lovers of American words, for it was on April 14 that Mr. Noah Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language was published. The year was 1828. America was a very young country, in many ways still working to define itself. Language in America was, well, messy. Some people spoke and wrote all British and proper, which was a problem in itself because, as Mr. Webster said (more or less), “Hey, we’re not British!” Then there were the regional dialects, the lack of standardized spelling (an editor’s nightmare) … It was messy.

With his new dictionary, Mr. Webster hoped to bless America with a common language, a language full of uniquely American words like “skunk,” a language in which “skunk” would be spelled exactly the same way no matter which state one happened to be writing in. His project was initially ridiculed by some, eventually respected by most, but at $15 or $20 a copy the dictionary was just too expensive for most people to buy. It didn’t sell well. After Mr. Webster’s death in 1843, the Merriam brothers bought the rights to the dictionary. Today I have half a shelf loaded with Merriam-Webster products and their online dictionary is one of my best friends. Plus, I know how to spell “skunk.”

And so, April 14 should be celebrated as Dictionary Day. Wordy people everywhere, rejoice!

(Thanks to Garrison Keillor and The Writer’s Almanac for sparking yet another Adventures in Editing post.)