NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Noah Webster

Noah Webster (October 16, 1758 – April 28, 1843) was an American lexicographer, textbook author, spelling reformer, political writer, word enthusiast, and editor. He has been called the "Father of American Scholarship and Education". His Blue-backed Speller books taught five generations of children in the United States how to spell and read, and (in the U.S.) his name became synonymous with "dictionary", especially the modern Merriam-Webster dictionary that was first published in 1828 as An American Dictionary of the English Language. This file has been listed on Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion. ... This file has been listed on Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion. ... is the 289th day of the year (290th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1758 (MDCCLVIII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Thursday of the 11-day slower Julian calendar). ... is the 118th day of the year (119th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1843 (MDCCCXLIII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian Calendar (or a common year starting on Friday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar). ... A lexicographer is a person devoted to the study of lexicography, especially an author of a dictionary. ... The aim of spelling reform is to make spelling easier for learners and users by removing its difficulties. ... Merriam-Webster, originally known as the G. & C. Merriam Company of Springfield, Massachusetts, is a United States company that publishes reference books, especially dictionaries that are descendants of Noah Websters An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828). ... Year 1828 (MDCCCXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian Calendar (or a leap year starting on Thursday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar). ... 1888 advertisment for Websters Dictionary Websters Dictionary is an American English language dictionary initially published by Noah Webster in 1806. ...

Biography

Noah Webster was born on October 16, 1758 in the West Division of Hartford, Connecticut, to an established American family. His father, Noah, Sr. (1722-1813), was a farmer and a sewer. His father was a descendant of Connecticut Governor John Webster; his mother, Mercy (née Steele; d. 1794), was a descendant of Governor William Bradford of Plymouth Colony. Noah had two brothers, (Abraham (1751-1831) and Charles (b. 1762)), and two sisters, (Mercy (1749-1820) and Jerusha (1756-1831)). His childhood home, the Noah Webster House, is now a National Historic Landmark and a museum. Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (1758x1406, 1546 KB) Summary Licensing File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Noah Webster User:Tony1/How to satisfy Criterion 1a Metadata This file contains additional information, probably... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (1758x1406, 1546 KB) Summary Licensing File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Noah Webster User:Tony1/How to satisfy Criterion 1a Metadata This file contains additional information, probably... A Ford Model T, used for giving tourist rides, is shown above at Greenfield Village. ... is the 289th day of the year (290th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1758 (MDCCLVIII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Thursday of the 11-day slower Julian calendar). ... Motto: Where City Style meets Village Charm Coordinates: , NECTA Region Incorporated 1854 Government - Type Council-manager - Town manager James Francis - Town council Scott Slifka, Mayor Art Spada, Deputy Mayor Shari Cantor Barbara Carpenter Charles Coursey Maureen K. McClay Mark C. Sinatro Carolyn Thornberry Joseph Verrengia Area - City 58. ... Official language(s) English Capital Hartford Largest city Bridgeport[3] Largest metro area Hartford Metro Area[2] Area Ranked 48th - Total 5,543[4] sq mi (14,356 kmÂ²) - Width 70 miles (113 km) - Length 110 miles (177 km) - % water 12. ... There is more than one person sharing this name. ... Seal of Plymouth Colony Map of Plymouth Colony showing town locations Capital Plymouth Language(s) English Religion Puritan, Separatist Government Monarchy Legislature General Court History - Established 1620 - First Thanksgiving 1621 - Pequot War 1637 - King Philips War 1675â€“1676 - Part of the Dominion of New England 1686â€“1688 - Disestablished 1691... The Noah Webster House is a historic house museum located at 227 South Main Street, West Hartford, Connecticut. ... This article or section needs additional references or sources to improve its verifiability. ...

At the age of 16, Noah began attending Yale College. His four years at Yale overlapped with the American Revolutionary War, and, because of food shortages, many of his college classes were held in Glastonbury, Connecticut. During the American Revolution, he served in the Connecticut Militia. For other uses, see Yale (disambiguation). ... This article is about military actions only. ... Location of Glastonbury in Connecticut Coordinates: , Country United States State Connecticut NECTA Hartford Region Capitol Region Settled 1636 Incorporated 1693 Government - Type Council-manager - Town manager Richard J. Johnson - Town council Susan Karp, Chm. ... John Trumbulls Declaration of Independence, showing the five-man committee in charge of drafting the Declaration in 1776 as it presents its work to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia The American Revolution refers to the period during the last half of the 18th century in which the Thirteen...

Having graduated from Yale in 1778, Noah wanted to continue his education in order to earn his law degree. He taught school in Glastonbury, Hartford, and West Hartford in order to pay for his education. He earned his law degree in 1781 but did not practice law until 1789, when he found that law was not to his liking. Instead, he tried teaching, setting up several very small schools that did not thrive.

Political vision

By 1781, Webster had an expansive view of the new nation. American nationalism was superior to Europe because American values were superior, he claimed. ^[1]

Webster dedicated his Speller and Dictionary to providing an intellectual foundation for American nationalism. In the 1780s, Noah Webster was an outspoken Federalist. In terms of political theory, he de-emphasized virtue (a core value of federalism) and emphasized widespread ownership of property (a key element of liberalism). [1]. The term federalist refers to several sets of political beliefs around the world. ...

Webster married well and had joined the elite in Hartford but did not have much money. In 1793, Alexander Hamilton loaned him $1500 to move to New York City to edit a Federalist newspaper. In December, he founded New York's first daily newspaper, American Minerva (later known as The Commercial Advertiser). He edited it for four years, writing the equivalent of 20 volumes of articles and editorials. He also published the semi-weekly publication, The Herald, A Gazette for the country (later known as The New York Spectator). As a partisan, he soon was denounced by the Democratic-Republicans as "a pusillanimous, half-begotten, self-dubbed patriot", "an incurable lunatic", and "a deceitful newsmonger ... Pedagogue and Quack". Fellow Federalist Cobbett labeled him "a traitor to the cause of Federalism", calling him "a toad in the service of sans-cullottism,", "a prostitute wretch", "a great fool, and a barefaced liar", "a spiteful viper", and "a maniacal pedant". The master of words was distressed. Even the use of words like "the people", "democracy", and "equality" in public debate bothered him, for such words were "metaphysical abstractions that either have no meaning, or at least none that mere mortals can comprehend." ^[2] Alexander Hamilton (January 11, 1755 or 1757â€“July 12, 1804) was an Army officer, lawyer, Founding Father, American politician, leading statesman, financier and political theorist. ... New York, New York and NYC redirect here. ... Painted rendition of a sans-culottes. ...

Webster always admired French radical thought, and unlike most Federalists he did not recoil at the execution of King Louis XVI. He urged a neutral foreign policy. But when French ambassador Edmund Genêt set up a network of pro-Jacobin "Democratic Republican societies" that entered American politics and attacked Washington, Webster condemned them. He called on fellow Federalist editors to "all agree to let the clubs alone—publish nothing for or against them. They are a plant of exotic and forced birth: the sunshine of peace will destroy them." Edmond-Charles GenÃªt (January 8, 1763 â€“ July 14, 1834), also known as Citizen GenÃªt, was a French ambassador to the United States during the French Revolution. ...

For decades, he was the most prolific author in the new nation, publishing textbooks, political essays for his Federalist party, and newspaper articles at a remarkable rate (a modern bibliography of his published works required 655 pages).

The Websters moved back to New Haven in 1798, and he served in the Connecticut House of Representatives in 1800 and 1802-7. Year 1798 (MDCCXCVIII) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Friday of the 11-day slower Julian calendar). ... The Hall of the Connecticut House of Representatives. ...

Speller and dictionary

As a teacher, he had come to dislike American elementary schools. They could be overcrowded, with up to seventy children of all ages crammed into one-room schoolhouses, poorly staffed with untrained teachers, and poorly equipped with no desks and unsatisfactory textbooks that came from England. Webster thought that Americans should learn from American books, so he began writing a three volume compendium, A Grammatical Institute of the English Language. The work consisted of a speller (published in 1783), a grammar (published in 1784), and a reader (published in 1785). His goal was to provide a uniquely American approach to training children. His most important improvement, he claimed, was to rescue "our native tongue" from "the clamor of pedantry" that surrounded English grammar and pronunciation. He complained that the English language had been corrupted by the British aristocracy, which set its own standard for proper spelling and pronunciation. Webster rejected the notion that the study of Greek and Latin must precede the study of English grammar. The appropriate standard for the American language, argued Webster, was, "the same republican principles as American civil and ecclesiastical constitutions", which meant that the people-at-large must control the language; popular sovereignty in government must be accompanied by popular usage in language. "The truth is general custom is the rule of speaking—and every deviation from this must be wrong." ^[3] Williamson School was a one-room school in Blanch, Caswell County, North Carolina One-room schools were commonplace throughout rural portions of various countries including the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Scotland and Ireland in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. ... 1783 was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ... 1784 was a leap year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ... 1785 was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ...

The Speller was arranged so that it could be easily taught to students, and it progressed by age. From his own experiences as a teacher, Webster thought the Speller should be simple and gave an orderly presentation of words and the rules of spelling and pronunciation. He believed students learned most readily when he broke a complex problem into its component parts and had each pupil master one part before moving to the next. Ellis argues that Webster anticipated some of the insights currently associated with Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development. Webster said that children pass through distinctive learning phases in which they master increasingly complex or abstract tasks. Therefore, teachers must not try to teach a three-year-old how to read; they could not do it until age five. He organized his speller accordingly, beginning with the alphabet and moving systematically through the different sounds of vowels and consonants, then syllables, then simple words, then more complex words, then sentences. ^[4] Jean Piaget (August 9, 1896 â€“ September 16, 1980) was a Swiss philosopher, natural scientist and developmental psychologist, well known for his work studying children, his theory of cognitive development and for his epistemological view called genetic epistemology. He created in 1955 the International Centre for Genetic Epistemology in Geneva and...

The speller was originally entitled The First Part of the Grammatical Institute of the English Language. Over the course of 385 editions in his lifetime, the title was changed in 1786 to The American Spelling Book, and again in 1829 to The Elementary Spelling Book. Most people called it the "Blue-Backed Speller" because of its blue cover, and for the next one hundred years, Webster's book taught children how to read, spell, and pronounce words. It was the most popular American book of its time; by 1861, it was selling a million copies per year, and its royalty of less than one cent per copy was enough to sustain Webster in his other endeavors. Some consider it to be the first dictionary created in the United States, and it helped create the popular contests known as spelling bees. 1786 was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1829 was a common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ... Year 1861 (MDCCCLXI) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Sunday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar). ... For other uses, see Spelling bee (disambiguation). ...

Part three of his Grammatical Institute (1785) was a reader designed to uplift the mind and "diffuse the principles of virtue and patriotism". "In the choice of pieces," he explained, "I have not been inattentive to the political interests of America. Several of those masterly addresses of Congress, written at the commencement of the late Revolution, contain such noble, just, and independent sentiments of liberty and patriotism, that I cannot help wishing to transfuse them into the breasts of the rising generation." Students received the usual quota of Plutarch, Shakespeare, Swift, and Addison, as well as such Americans as Joel Barlow's Vision of Columbus, Timothy Dwight's Conquest of Canaan, and John Trumbull's poem M'Fingal. He included excerpts from Tom Paine's The Crisis and an essay by Thomas Day calling for the abolition of slavery in accord with the Declaration of Independence.

Slowly, he changed the spelling of words, such that they became 'Americanized'. He chose s over c in words like defense; he changed the re to er in words like center; he dropped one of the Ls in traveller; at first, he kept the u in words like colour or favour, but he dropped it in later editions.

Unauthorized printing of his books, and disparate copyright laws that varied among the thirteen states, led Webster to champion the federal copyright law that was successfully passed in 1790. Not to be confused with copywriting. ...

Webster married Rebecca Greenleaf (1766-1847) on October 26, 1789 in New Haven, Connecticut. They had eight children: Emily Schotten (1790-1861), Frances Julianna (1793-1869), Harriet (1797-1844), Mary (1799-1819), William Greenleaf (1801-1869), Eliza (1803-1888), Henry (1806-1807), and Louisa (b. 1808). Webster liked to carry raisins and candies in his pocket for his children to enjoy. is the 299th day of the year (300th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1789 (MDCCLXXXIX) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Monday of the 11-day slower Julian calendar). ...

The following year, at the age of 43, Webster began writing an expanded and comprehensive dictionary, An American Dictionary of the English Language, which would take twenty-seven years to complete. To supplement the documentation of the etymology of the words, Webster learned twenty-six languages, including Anglo-Saxon and Sanskrit. Webster hoped to standardize American speech, since Americans in different parts of the country spelled, pronounced, and used words differently. Note: This page contains phonetic information presented in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) using Unicode. ... Sanskrit ( , for short ) is a classical language of India, a liturgical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism, and one of the 23 official languages of India. ...

During the course of his work on the book, the family moved to Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1812, where Webster helped to found Amherst College. In 1822, the family moved back to New Haven, and Webster was awarded an honorary degree from Yale the following year. Location in Massachusetts Coordinates: Country United States State Massachusetts County Hampshire County Settled 1703 Incorporated 1775 Government - Type Representative town meeting Area - Town 27. ... For the overture by Tchaikovsky, see 1812 Overture; For the wars, see War of 1812 (USA - United Kingdom) or Patriotic War of 1812 (France - Russia) For the Siberia Airlines plane crashed over the Black Sea on October 4, 2001, see Siberia Airlines Flight 1812 1812 was a leap year starting... Amherst College is a private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts, USA. It is the third oldest college in Massachusetts. ... 1822 (MDCCCXXII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Thursday of the 12-day-slower Julian calendar). ...

Webster completed his dictionary during his year abroad in 1825 in Paris, France, and at the University of Cambridge. His book contained 70,000 words, of which 12,000 had never appeared in any earlier published dictionary. As a spelling reformer, Webster believed that English spelling rules were unnecessarily complex, so his dictionary introduced American English spellings like "color" instead of "colour", "wagon" instead of "waggon", "center" instead of "centre", and "honor" instead of "honour". He also added American words that were not in British dictionaries like "skunk" and "squash". At the age of seventy, Webster published his dictionary in 1828. The University of Cambridge (often Cambridge University), located in Cambridge, England, is the second-oldest university in the English-speaking world and has a reputation as one of the worlds most prestigious universities. ... The aim of spelling reform is to make spelling easier for learners and users by removing its difficulties. ... For other uses, see American English (disambiguation). ...

Though it now has an honored place in the history of American English, Webster's first dictionary only sold 2,500 copies. He was forced to mortgage his home to bring out a second edition, and his life from then on was plagued with debt.

In 1840, the second edition was published in two volumes. On May 28, 1843, a few days after he had completed revising an appendix to the second edition, and with much of his efforts with the dictionary still unrecognized, Noah Webster died. May 28 is the 148th day of the year (149th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1843 (MDCCCXLIII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian Calendar (or a common year starting on Friday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar). ...

Religious views

Webster was a devout Christian. His speller was very moralistic, and his first lesson began "Be not anxious for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink ; nor for your body, what ye shall put on ; for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of these things."

His 1828 American Dictionary contained the greatest number of Biblical definitions given in any reference volume. Webster considered "education useless without the Bible." Webster learned 20 different languages in finding definitions for which a particular word is used. [Preface to the 1828 edition of Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language] This Gutenberg Bible is displayed by the United States Library. ...

Webster released his own edition of the Bible in 1833, called the Common Version. He used the King James Version as a base, and consulted the Hebrew and Greek along with various other versions and commentaries. Webster molded the KJV to correct grammar, replaced words that were no longer used, and did away with words and phrases that could be seen as offensive. Year 1833 (MDCCCXXXIII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian Calendar (or a common year starting on Sunday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar). ... Noah Websters 1833 limited revision of the King James Bible focused mainly on replacing archaic words and making simple grammatical changes. ... This page is about the version of the Bible; for the Harvey Danger album, see King James Version (album). ...

All editions of Webster's Dictionary published in 1913 and earlier, along with the Webster Bible, and Dissertation on the English Language are available in the public domain. Year 1913 (MCMXIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Tuesday of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... Noah Websters Dissertation on the English Language was written in 1789 to further explain American English. ... The public domain comprises the body of all creative works and other knowledge—writing, artwork, music, science, inventions, and others—in which no person or organization has any proprietary interest. ...

Contents

Biography

Political vision

Speller and dictionary

Religious views

See also

References

Primary sources

External links