NATIONAL DICTIONARY DAY

NATIONAL DICTIONARY DAY

National Dictionary Day is celebrated annually on October 16. 

National Dictionary Day, an “unofficial” national holiday was created in honor of Noah Webster’s birthday (October 16, 1758) and is set aside as a day to emphasize the importance of learning and using dictionary skills and increasing one’s vocabulary.  Webster is considered the “Father of the American Dictionary”.  

Celebrate today by learning a little bit of dictionary history and Noah Webster: 

It was in the year 1806 that American Noah Webster published his first dictionary, A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language.  In 1807, he began compiling an expanded and fully comprehensive dictionary, An American Dictionary of the English Language, which took twenty-seven years to complete.  To help in his writing and to evaluate the etymology of words, Webster learned twenty-six languages, including Old English(Anglo-Saxon), German, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, Hebrew, Arabic and Sanskrit. 

Webster completed his dictionary during his year abroad in Paris, France at the University of Cambridge.  His book contained seventy thousand words, of which twelve thousand had never appeared in published dictionary before.

As a spelling reformer, he believed that the English spelling rules were unnecessarily complex so in his dictionary, he had introduced American English spellings, replacing “colour” with “color”, substituting “wagon” for “waggon”, and printing “center” instead of “centre”.  Webster also added American words such as, “skunk” and “squash” that did not appear in British dictionaries.

Webster published his dictionary in 1828 at the age of seventy.  The dictionary sold 2500 copies.  In 1840, the second edition was published in two volumes.

Celebrate today by learning a new word or two using a dictionary!