National Dictionary Day and Noah Webster's Birthday

Happy belated National Dictionary Day! I am going to start posting a mini-post for each of the holidays posted on the Bibliophile's Calendar!

October 16th is nationally recognized as Dictionary Day, which is based on Noah Webster's birthday. Noah Webster, the Father of the American Dictionary, is fittingly recognized with this celebration. He published his first dictionary, A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language, in 1806. Immediately following its release he began compiling his most cumbersome work: An American Dictionary of the English Language. To do so, he learned 26 languages some being Old-English, German, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, Hebrew, Arabic, and Sanskrit. It took him 27 years to compile over seventy thousand words, twelve thousand of which had never been recorded in a dictionary before.

Webster sparked a massive linguistic reform. He found some British spellings unnecessarily complicated; thus, he created American-English spellings. His reform turned words like "colour" to "color" and "waggon" to "wagon".

Dictionaries are exceedingly important to those of us who enjoy reading and writing, as they make our understanding clearer and our writing sophisticated and enjoyable.

How can you celebrate? Learn a funny or new word! The best way to honor Noah Webster is to learn something new, the concept he dedicated his entire life to.

*SnIcKeRsNeE!* The word I learned, snickersnee, means, contrary to its cute and fun sound, a long, dangerous knife! EEEEK! Comment the word you learned!!

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