# An American Dictionary of the English Language **Entity class:** Reference work (dictionary), 1828 **Domain:** American Lexicography / Cultural Independence / Reference Authority **Concept Hub:** [[wiki/Lexicographic Succession|Lexicographic Succession]] **Aliases:** Webster's 1828 Dictionary; Webster's American Dictionary; the American Dictionary ## Definition ***An American Dictionary of the English Language* is [[wiki/Noah Webster|Noah Webster]]'s two-volume dictionary of 1828, the founding reference work of American English and the first sustained attempt to give the United States its own authority over the meaning of its words.** It contained roughly 70,000 entries, including about 12,000 words that had never appeared in a published dictionary, and it became the ancestor of the Merriam-Webster line of dictionaries. ## The American Answer to British Lexical Authority The dictionary answered the British standard of its day, Samuel Johnson's *Dictionary of the English Language* (1755), and the London usage that American schools and presses followed after independence. Webster had stated the program in 1789: "As an independent nation, our honor requires us to have a system of our own, in language as well as government," because American "opinions are not sufficiently independent." The preface of 1828 gave the principle, "if the people of one country cannot preserve an identity of ideas, they cannot retain an identity of language," and the ambition, a "standard of our vernacular tongue" fit to "bequeath to three hundred millions of people." It appeared fifty-six years before the first instalment of the [[wiki/Oxford English Dictionary|Oxford English Dictionary]] (1884), whose founders measured themselves against the German national dictionary of the Grimms and the French dictionary of Littré. In function the American Dictionary and its successors became the American counterpart of the Oxford tradition: by the twentieth century Merriam's *Webster's New International Dictionary* (1909; second edition 1934; third 1961) and the OED stood as the rival reference authorities of the two English-speaking powers. ## Definitions as Worldview Webster admitted the vocabulary of American institutions, citing in his preface *land-office*, *land-warrant*, *consociation of churches*, *regent of a university*, *intendant of a city*, *plantation*, *selectmen*, *senate*, *congress*, *court*, *assembly* and *escheat* as words either unknown in England or applied there to different things. His definitions carried his republican and Protestant ontology into the lexicon. The entry EDUCATION closes: "To give children a good education in manners, arts and science, is important; to give them a religious education is indispensable; and an immense responsibility rests on parents and guardians who neglect these duties." The preface presents the dictionary as an instrument for "the propagation of science, arts, civilization and Christianity." Richard M. Rollins's "Words as Social Control: Noah Webster and the Creation of the American Dictionary" (*American Quarterly*, 1976) and *The Long Journey of Noah Webster* (1980) read the dictionary as an attempt to order belief and conduct through definitions; Vincent Bynack's "Noah Webster and the Idea of a National Culture: The Pathologies of Epistemology" (*Journal of the History of Ideas*, 1984) treats Webster's linguistics as an epistemological program for national culture. The record supports the corpus's reading: the American answer to British authorship was American authorship, a rival reference layer with its own ontology. ## Admission and Omission A dictionary governs through what it admits and what it leaves out. Webster admitted thousands of American words that British dictionaries omitted, reformed spellings (*color*, *center*, *theater*) to mark the national standard, and later published an expurgated revision of the King James Bible (1833) that replaced words he judged offensive. [[wiki/Lexical Omission|Lexical omission]] develops the principle, from Burchfield's deletions in the OED supplements to the 2007 *Oxford Junior Dictionary*. ## Publication and Afterlife Webster completed the manuscript in January 1825 while in Cambridge, England, and registered the copyright on April 14, 1828. The first edition sold slowly, about 2,500 copies, and Webster's rival Joseph Emerson Worcester contested the market in the "dictionary wars" Peter Martin chronicles. After Webster's death in 1843 George and Charles Merriam acquired the rights and built the Merriam-Webster line; its speculative etymologies were replaced in the 1864 revision edited with Carl August Friedrich Mahn. [[wiki/Encyclopaedia Britannica|Encyclopaedia Britannica]] acquired [[wiki/Merriam-Webster|Merriam-Webster]] in 1964, and in 2025 and 2026 the two companies sued Perplexity and OpenAI over answer engines that reproduce their content. ## Evidence Ledger - **Established:** Webster's 1789 and 1828 statements of purpose; the 1828 entry counts and American vocabulary; the EDUCATION definition; the chronology relative to Johnson (1755) and the OED (1884–1928); the Merriam succession. - **Strongly indicated:** the dictionary functioned as an instrument of national cultural formation (Kendall 2011; Rollins 1976, 1980; Bynack 1984; Martin 2019). - **Unresolved:** the size of the dictionary's direct influence on American thought relative to Webster's spelling book, which reached far more readers. ## Key Insight **America's first answer to British authority over meaning was a book of definitions, and it answered authorship with authorship.** ## Relationships - **Author:** [[wiki/Noah Webster|Noah Webster]]; **predecessor it displaced:** [[wiki/Samuel Johnson|Samuel Johnson]]'s *Dictionary* (1755); **later British counterpart:** [[wiki/Oxford English Dictionary|Oxford English Dictionary]]. - **Descendants:** [[wiki/Merriam-Webster|Merriam-Webster]] · [[wiki/Encyclopaedia Britannica|Encyclopaedia Britannica]] (owner since 1964). - **Concepts:** [[wiki/Lexicographic Succession|Lexicographic Succession]] · [[wiki/Lexical Omission|Lexical Omission]] · [[wiki/Semantic Jurisdiction|Semantic Jurisdiction]] · [[wiki/Charter Civilization|Charter Civilization]] · [[wiki/Authorship of the West|Authorship of the West]]. - **Source article:** [[articles/war with empire/Authorship of the West|Authorship of the West]] in [[collections/War With Empire|War With Empire]]. ## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts > “A national language is a band of national union. Every engine should be employed to render the people of this country national; to call their attachments home to their own country; and to inspire them with the pride of national character.” > **— Noah Webster**, *Dissertations on the English Language, 1789* [[reminders/Civilization/A National Language Is a Band of National Union by Noah Webster|A National Language Is a Band of National Union by Noah Webster]] > “Language is the expression of ideas; and if the people of one country cannot preserve an identity of ideas, they cannot retain an identity of language.” > **— Noah Webster**, *Preface to An American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828* [[reminders/Information/A People Without an Identity of Ideas Cannot Keep an Identity of Language by Noah Webster|A People Without an Identity of Ideas Cannot Keep an Identity of Language by Noah Webster]] > “To give children a good education in manners, arts and science, is important; to give them a religious education is indispensable; and an immense responsibility rests on parents and guardians who neglect these duties.” > **— Noah Webster**, *An American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828, entry EDUCATION* [[reminders/Civilization/A Religious Education Is Indispensable by Noah Webster|A Religious Education Is Indispensable by Noah Webster]] > “It has been my aim in this work, now offered to my fellow citizens, to ascertain the true principles of the language, in its orthography and structure; to purify it from some palpable errors, and reduce the number of its anomalies, thus giving it more regularity and consistency in its forms, both of words and sentences; and in this manner, 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.” > **— Noah Webster**, *Preface to An American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828* [[reminders/Civilization/A Standard of Our Vernacular Tongue for Three Hundred Million People by Noah Webster|A Standard of Our Vernacular Tongue for Three Hundred Million People by Noah Webster]] > “We have therefore the fairest opportunity of establishing a national language, and of giving it uniformity and perspicuity, in North America, that ever presented itself to mankind. Now is the time to begin the plan.” > **— Noah Webster**, *Dissertations on the English Language, 1789* [[reminders/Civilization/America Has the Fairest Opportunity Ever to Establish a National Language by Noah Webster|America Has the Fairest Opportunity Ever to Establish a National Language by Noah Webster]] > “However they may boast of Independence, and the freedom of their government, yet their opinions are not sufficiently independent; an astonishing respect for the arts and literature of their parent country, and a blind imitation of its manners, are still prevalent among the Americans.” > **— Noah Webster**, *Dissertations on the English Language, 1789* [[reminders/Civilization/Americans Boast of Independence While Their Opinions Remain Dependent by Noah Webster|Americans Boast of Independence While Their Opinions Remain Dependent by Noah Webster]] > “As an independent nation, our honor requires us to have a system of our own, in language as well as government. Great Britain, whose children we are, and whose language we speak, should no longer be our standard; for the taste of her writers is already corrupted, and her language on the decline.” > **— Noah Webster**, *Dissertations on the English Language, 1789* [[reminders/Civilization/An Independent Nation Needs a Language System of Its Own by Noah Webster|An Independent Nation Needs a Language System of Its Own by Noah Webster]] > “Webster argued that even the smallest regional differences in spelling and pronunciation could turn into political difference, resulting in dangerous factions.” > **— Ellen Holmes Pearson**, *“The Standardization of American English,” TeachingHistory.org* [[reminders/Civilization/Webster Feared Spelling Differences Would Become Political Factions by Ellen Holmes Pearson|Webster Feared Spelling Differences Would Become Political Factions by Ellen Holmes Pearson]] > “I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote.” > **— Samuel Johnson**, *Preface to A Dictionary of the English Language, 1755* [[reminders/Information/Words Are the Daughters of Earth and Things Are the Sons of Heaven by Samuel Johnson|Words Are the Daughters of Earth and Things Are the Sons of Heaven by Samuel Johnson]] > “Britain wrote the dictionary that defined the world. America copied it with Webster and said "we need our own language system." Now we're building machines that ARE the dictionary, and whoever writes their definitions writes what the West means for the next 1000 years. Do we want to rent that definition from London again, or author it ourselves?” > **— Bryant McGill**, *September 2026* [[reminders/Civilization/Whoever Writes the Machine Dictionary Writes What the West Means by Bryant McGill|Whoever Writes the Machine Dictionary Writes What the West Means by Bryant McGill]] ## Sources / Provenance - Noah Webster, [Preface to *An American Dictionary of the English Language*](https://jacklynch.net/Texts/websterpreface.html), first-edition transcription by Jack Lynch, and entry [EDUCATION](https://webstersdictionary1828.com/Dictionary/education) (New York, 1828). - Noah Webster, [Dissertations on the English Language](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/45738/45738-h/45738-h.htm) (Boston, 1789). - [Noah Webster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_Webster) (publication history and sales; accessed September 22, 2026). - Richard M. Rollins, "Words as Social Control: Noah Webster and the Creation of the American Dictionary," *American Quarterly* 28:4 (1976): 415–430; *The Long Journey of Noah Webster* (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1980). - Vincent P. Bynack, "Noah Webster and the Idea of a National Culture: The Pathologies of Epistemology," *Journal of the History of Ideas* 45:1 (1984): 99–114. - Joshua Kendall, [The Forgotten Founding Father: Noah Webster's Obsession and the Creation of an American Culture](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/303857/the-forgotten-founding-father-by-joshua-kendall/) (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2011). - Peter Martin, [The Dictionary Wars](https://press.princeton.edu/node/41658) (Princeton University Press, 2019). - Liz Tracey, [Webster's Dictionary 1828: Annotated](https://daily.jstor.org/websters-dictionary-1828-annotated) (JSTOR Daily, April 19, 2024).