Why Americans Drop the British “U”

Noah Webster’s first American dictionary and the revolution it brought to language in a new nation.

In 1775, a revolution was brewing in the American colonies — a war that was to shape the country and change it forever. At Yale College in Connecticut, a sixteen-year-old farmer’s son with a fire for independence and a love of education was studying hard and wishing he could enlist in the growing colonist militias. His name was Noah Webster, and his name was to become a household word in generations to come: the man who defined our language. Later in life he would write two dictionaries that would, like the revolution, help shape and unify America and its education, making him worthy to be counted among our Founding Fathers.

While still in college, Webster served in the Connecticut militia. The militia saw no combat during the eight years of war, but that did not quench Noah Webster’s enthusiasm for liberty. His college classes suffered somewhat during the war, but Webster’s fervor for education wasn’t dampened, either.

Writing and copyrighting

After college, he worked as a schoolmaster to put himself through law school. Though he received his law degree in 1781, he did not practice law until 1789. He was busy writing a three-volume book entitled A Grammatical Institute of the English Language.

Webster published the first volume of this book, a speller, in 1783. Over the next two years he published the subsequent volumes, a grammar book and reader. He later revised the immensely popular speller and titled it Elementary Spelling Book, which became more commonly known as the “blue-backed speller” because of its blue cover.

Webster, a man of action, knew his books would not sell themselves, so he boldly wrote letters to George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, asking them to endorse his Grammatical Institute. Both refused, but Webster wasn’t daunted.

With the advent of his locally printed schoolbooks, a new problem surfaced — unauthorized copying. Webster, determined to secure a national copyright law, traveled the country, promoting his books and obtaining state copyrights. He also began lobbying Congress for a national copyright law. In 1790, partly due to his persistence, Congress passed a law decreeing a fourteen-year copyright guarantee for each published book.

The Constitution as backbone

Webster’s staunch patriotism had not diminished since college. A Federalist like George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, he wholeheartedly approved of the Constitution and argued for a strong central government in order to achieve national unity. In 1785 he published Sketches of American Policy, a short pamphlet outlining his reasons for supporting the Constitution.

Webster firmly believed that America was by far superior to any European country. He claimed that American ideals and values “will finally raise her to a pitch of greatness and luster, before which the glory of ancient Greece and Rome shall dwindle to a point, and the splendor of modern Empires fade into obscurity.” Though he did not attend the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, his writings were influential there. In his Sketches of American Policy, he called the Articles of Confederation “a ridiculous farce, a burlesque on government, and a reproach to America.” He felt that America would not succeed as a country if it was separated into individual entities. “We ought not to consider ourselves as inhabitants of a single state only,” he wrote, “but as Americans, as the common subjects of a great empire.”

Education: the key to America’s success

Webster was sure that America would be a stronger country if its children were well educated. In the early nineteenth century, schools were ill-kept and poorly staffed, with teachers hardly more literate than the students. Webster was disgusted by America’s school system. He wrote,

“As language is the medium of all social intercourse, and the principal instrument by which science, arts, and civilization are preserved and propagated… it is of great importance that its general principles should be well understood by those who superintend the education of youth.”

The Grammatical Institute was just the beginning of his campaign to revolutionize American schools. Language, he believed, was the key.

“Your petitioner, in pursuit of his aim, wishes to see America rendered as independent and illustrious in letters as she is already in arms and civil policy,” he insisted. And he had plans to make this happen. In 1798, he was preparing to write a dictionary. This dictionary would not be just a book, but it would be a symbol of everything new, unified and independent in the United States. “A national language is a national tie,” he said in a letter to Timothy Pickering, “and what country wants it more than America?”

Lexicography: the defining of words

The first English dictionary, written by Henry Cockeram and published in England in 1623, was eloquently titled The English Dictionary: or, an Interpretation of Hard English Words. Over the next 200 years, several more English dictionaries were published, but most of them were British. Two small dictionaries were published in the colonies, but they were of no consequence.

One of the most trusted dictionaries of the time was Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1755. Popular as this tome was, it contained only British words and idioms. This was fine for the British, but not for the Americans. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Webster understood that the world was changing. New ideas, governments, countries, and words were emerging. English in Webster’s infant America was becoming distinctly American. What was to be done?

“I have been engaged for some time in preparing to give an improved dictionary of the language,” Webster wrote in a letter to Matthew Carey in 1805, “and, as a preliminary step, have been learning the Anglo-Saxon, the mother tongue of the present English.” Early on, Webster concluded that the original languages were the key to a new, superior language.

Back to basics

Webster proposed demolishing “those odious distinctions of provincial dialects which are the subject of reciprocal ridicule in different states.” In order to sever all ties with England, he felt that America should break away from all British spellings. Imported goods from England had already been boycotted — why not do the same with imported words? Like Benjamin Franklin, Webster wanted to simplify English spelling. He felt that many of the modern English spelling patterns were ridiculous and followed no rules. As he worked to find accurate definitions for his words, he learned more and more about their etymologies. He began ruthlessly altering words in order to comply with their original roots. Heinous was rewritten as hainous, and molasses as melasses.

“I do not write honour, candour, errour, because they are neither French [nor] Latin. If we follow the French, the orthography ought to be honeur, candeur, erreur; if the Latin, (as we ought because they are Latin words) then we ought to write honor, etc., and this is now the best and most common usage.”

His simplifications of oddly spelled English words included tung (tongue), wimmen (women), nabor (neighbour), jail (gaol), and mask (masque). “The affixing of k to such words as public and music is barbarous, not being warranted by any language from which or through which these words are derived,” he fumed. Some of Webster’s spellings were adopted, and some were rejected. In later dictionaries, some of his simplifications were rewritten to comply with the people’s preferences.

“Unity” was Webster’s theme throughout life — one unified country, one unified language, one unified spelling. He believed America could not succeed as a group of independent states. For this reason, he disapproved of the Articles of Confederation and supported the Constitution. This was also why he wanted a national language, a national tie, a national theme that would bind the United States of America together as one country, raised above all other countries on the globe. In Noah Webster’s opinion, national literacy was the key to success.

The first dictionary

Webster’s education campaign took off in 1806, when he published A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language. It was an instant hit with many, but some of Webster’s political enemies wrinkled their noses in disapproval. They called him an “absurd, vain innovator” — and worse. They protested that Samuel Johnson’s dictionary was quite good enough. Just who did this Connecticut editor think he was, anyway?

Webster retaliated strongly. He pointed out that Johnson’s dictionary was British, and contained outdated British words. The American people needed an American dictionary for their new American words. Skunk, chowder, hickory, steamboat, vaccination, and parachute were just a few of these new terms. Webster claimed to have coined only one word of his own: demoralize.

He listed the numerous mistakes in Johnson’s dictionary, vehemently asserting that “Americans, like other people, are strongly inclined to rest their opinions on authority.” But just because something was accepted as an “authority” did not necessarily mean that it was right. “We are too apt to rest contented with opinions and systems without examining their truth and propriety. There is a kind of vis inertiae in the human mind, which inclines it to rest where it is, rather than be at the trouble of searching for a more eligible solution,” he wrote in 1785. His platform was not only that his dictionary was right, but that Johnson’s was wrong. The existing lexicon should not be accepted simply because it had always been the authority. Too many people, he grumbled, based their opinions merely on what came before them, instead of forming their own ideas and thinking for themselves. In this respect, Webster had a much more modern mindset than many of his fellow Americans.

By 1807, just one year after the publication of his Compendious Dictionary, Webster had begun plans for a second dictionary, containing thousands of words and definitions. The Compendious Dictionary had been good, but it was only the prologue.

The second dictionary — the magnum opus

This new dictionary brought forward an innovative way of pronunciation — with the advent of Webster’s diacritical marks. In 1785 he wrote the following:

“With respect to an index or key to the pronunciation of words, it appears to me a most valuable improvement in modern dictionaries and doubtless may be a great advantage in a spelling book …Of course, we find that thousands of the most common and necessary words are generally pronounced wrong.”

Another important element of Webster’s new dictionary was its etymological information. Before the Compendious Dictionary, dictionaries did not contain information about the origin of words. And at the beginning, Webster hadn’t intended to include that either. But he was a stickler for perfection and began researching some of the words to find the proper definitions and pronunciations. “My design,” he wrote in 1807, “was chiefly limited to the correction of a few palpable errors in orthography and definition, and the insertion of a great number of legitimate words and significations not found in any British work of the kind.”

As he studied, Webster became more interested in the background of the words. The English language is a great melting pot of words from other languages. Webster soon realized that to synthesize a comprehensive American English, he would have to study the original languages that had influenced the tongue we speak today. He had begun that in his Compendious Dictionary, but it was in this new work — soon to be titled An American Dictionary of the English Language — that his extensive, twenty-year research of past languages would be fully realized.

Innovation is not just the appearance of new things, but also the restatement and improvement of that which is old. Webster wanted to bring his new country into the dawn of new knowledge. In order to do that, he went back to the mother tongues, delving deep into the past to develop and improve our modern language.

In 1824, Noah Webster and his son, William, traveled to England and France for Webster’s research. Webster worked feverishly until he finally completed the dictionary at Cambridge University in January of 1825 (a rather ironic location for a work that was supposed to be the epitome of all things American.)

The dictionary was now finished, but there still remained three years of work to prepare it for publication. Excited that the end was in sight, Webster and his son returned home. For three years, Webster diligently proofread his massive manuscript, made corrections, fixed mistakes and secured a publisher. At last, in May of 1828, the proof sheets were printed. By November 1828, 2500 copies of the American Dictionary were in the hands of America’s people. Webster’s job was done.

Webster’s legacy

The reviews were spectacular. The United States, for the most part, wholeheartedly endorsed the American Dictionary. The two-volume set cost $20.00, a large sum in those days, but that didn’t slow sales. The Connecticut state legislature voted to give every school in the state a copy. The United States Congress and Supreme Court acknowledged it as the official authority. As time went on, it became the most celebrated reference volume in America. “Look it up in Webster” turned into a common catchphrase. Webster had fulfilled his ambition: to give his beloved country a book that identified its language and put literacy into the hands of the people. He died on May 28, 1843, but his ideas and innovations did not.

Noah Webster’s 1806 and 1828 dictionaries were much more than just lists of words — they were a symbol of his new country and all it stood for. Before Webster came on the scene, the written English language in America (and around the world) was inconsistent and poorly organized. With his dictionaries came a revolution in American education.

Noah Webster and his contemporaries laid the groundwork for the United States of America. They were brave enough to innovate and forge ahead on their own. In a time when everything was done according to custom and tradition, Webster took the initiative to break the mold and influence our country for generations to come, making him worthy to be counted among the Founding Fathers.