I am compelled to read. I am compelled to write. I am compelled to dialog with others. I have an admitted love affair with words. And so I often go to the dictionary to discover or reaffirm the meaning of words. Today I learned some very interesting facts about Noah Webster, the "father" of the American dictionary ~ and so I share ~
"...the greatest and most widely remembered of his many language-related exploits is the one for which we know him best: his magnum opus, the great American Dictionary of the English Language – a work so profound in its scholarship, so far-reaching in scope, and of such enduring value that the name Webster has now become all but synonymous with the word dictionary.
In its earliest conception, the dictionary was ... a relatively small collection of words designed to reinforce Webster's spelling standardizations and provide a vocabulary for young readers of his school anthology. But once the seed of the project was planted in his mind, it began to grow of its own accord. Even before the school dictionary (A Compendious Dictionary of the American Language, 1806) had come off the presses, Webster was already planning to expand this modest volume (408 pages, 40,600 words) into a much larger work.
He prepared for this massive undertaking by firming up his college Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, perfecting his French and German, and then moving on to tackle Danish, Italian, Anglo-Saxon, Welsh, Old Irish, Chaldaic, Syrian, Arabic, Armoric, and Persian. By the time he was finished, Webster had acquired a knowledge of more than twenty languages and alphabets, exhausted the resources of every library in America, scoured the shelves of the massive Bibliotheque du Roi in Paris, and consulted with the finest linguistic scholars in Oxford and Cambridge. When released in November 1828, his American Dictionary, the fruit of twenty years' labor, contained more than 70,000 words with extensive definitions and etymological origins. In the preface, Webster, a lifelong Congregationalist and a born again Christian who had experienced a dramatic resurgence of personal faith at a revival meeting in 1808, dedicated the volume to God and offered it as a gift to the American people.
"No author before or since has ever written a dictionary with so broad a purpose," says biographer Harlow Giles Unger: It was not just a list of words and definitions. It was a wellspring of truths that promised his countrymen an increase in 'the wealth, learning, moral and religious elevation of character, and glory' of their country – a self-contained educative institution designed to serve as a secular companion to the Bible.
It was also, of course, the last and greatest testimonial to its author's deep faith in the power of words – a power which, according to Webster's biblical worldview, is ultimately rooted in the "divine origin" of language. For Webster was above all a man who believed that the universe had been spoken into existence by the Word of God, – the same Word that became flesh in the person of Jesus Christ." *
No wonder I'm such an avid fan of words.
(*quote on Noah Webster from http://www.thetruthproject.org/)
No comments:
Post a Comment