Noah Webster Part 7

height} heighth} height} hight} hight }

maneuver maneuver } manuvre}

mela.s.ses mola.s.ses

mold mold } mould}

molt molt } moult}

plow plow } plough}

tongue} tongue tung }

wo woe

crum crumb

pontif pontiff

ake } ache ache}

maiz maize

gimblet gimlet

feather} feather fether }

steady} steady steddy}

mosk mosque

ribin ribbon

cutlas cutla.s.s

skain skain} skein}

sherif sheriff

porpess porpoise

It should be added that in many cases where the later editors have receded from Webster's advanced position they have added a note approving his innovation as etymologically correct and preferable. There can be no doubt that Webster was careless and inconsistent in his entry of these words, since he would venture his improvement under the word, fling scorn at the current usage, and then, when using the word elsewhere in definition or in compounds, forget his improvement and follow the customary orthography. From our rapid survey of the orthography, however, it may be said in general that Webster's decision in the case of cla.s.ses of words has been maintained in subsequent editions, but his individual alterations have been regarded as contributions to an impossibly ideal correct orthography, and quietly dropped. The fact ill.u.s.trates Webster's strength and weakness. His notions on the subject of uniformity were often very sensible, and he had the advantage of reducing to order what was hopelessly chaotic in common usage. But his sense of the stability of usage was imperfect, and when he moved among the words at random, arranging the language to suit his personal taste, he discovered or his successors did that words have roots of another kind than what etymologists regard.

Webster was wont to defend himself against the common charge of proposing new forms of words, by showing that, if one went far enough back, he would be sure to come upon the same forms in English literature; that his aim was to restore, not to invent, and to bring back the language to its earlier and historic shape. This is a defense familiar to us in these later days of spelling reform; and no one doubts, who knows the chaos of English spelling before the days of printing, that authority could be found for any favorite mode of spelling a word. Webster claimed the same conservative principles in the matter of p.r.o.nunciation, and stoutly declared that he was a champion for historic English sounds as opposed to the innovations offered by Sheridan, Walker, and Jamieson. "The language of a nation," he says in his Introduction, "is the common property of the people, and no individual has a right to make in-roads upon its principles. As it is the medium of communication between men, it is important that the same written words and the same oral sounds to express the same ideas should be used by the whole nation. When any man, therefore, attempts to change the established orthography or p.r.o.nunciation, except to correct palpable errors and produce uniformity by recalling wanderers into the pale of regular a.n.a.logies, he offers an indignity to the nation. No local practice, however respectable, will justify the attempt. There is great dignity, as well as propriety, in respecting the universal and long-established usages of a nation. With these views of the subject, I feel myself bound to reject all modern innovations which violate the established principles and a.n.a.logies of the language, and destroy or impair the value of alphabetical writing. I have therefore endeavored to present to my fellow-citizens the English language in its genuine purity, as we have received the inheritance from our ancestors, without removing a landmark. If the language is fatally destined to be corrupted, I will not be an instrument of the mischief."

These are certainly brave words, and there are even people who would doubt if Webster had the courage of such convictions. In his Dictionary he seems to have somewhat underestimated the importance of noting the p.r.o.nunciation. He devotes a number of pages, it is true, in the Introduction, to a discussion of the principles involved, but in marking the words he used only the simplest method, and disregarded refinements of speech. The word culture, for instance, is marked by him [c-]ul'ture, while in the latest edition it appears as [c-]ult'ure (kult'y?r). He had a few antipathies, as to the _tsh_ sound then fashionable in such words as _tumult_, and with a certain native pugnacity he attacked the orthoepists who at that time had elaborated their system more than had the orthographists; he did not believe that nice shades of sound could be represented to the eye by characters, and he appears to have been somewhat impatient of the whole subject. He maintained that the speech which generally prevailed in New England in his day represented the best and most historic p.r.o.nunciation. The first ministers had been educated at the universities, and the respect felt for them had led to a general acceptance of their mode of speech. He himself said _vollum_ for volume, and _patriot_, and _perce_ for pierce. He regarded Sheridan, Walker, Perry, Jones, and Jamieson as having, in their attempts at securing uniformity, only unsettled the old and familiar speech,--a curious commentary on his own performances in orthography. He does not here, either, forget his loyalty to America. "In a few instances," he says, "the common usage of a great and respectable portion of the people of this country accords with the a.n.a.logies of the language, but not with the modern notation of English orthoepists. In such cases it seems expedient and proper to retain our own usage. To renounce a practice confessedly regular for one confessedly anomalous, out of respect to foreign usage, would hardly be consistent with the dignity of lexicography. When we have principle on our side, let us adhere to it.

The time cannot be distant when the population of this vast country will throw off their leading-strings, and walk in their own strength; and the more we can raise the credit and authority of principle over the caprices of fashion and innovation, the nearer we approach to uniformity and stability of practice."

The absence of the finer qualities of scholarship in Webster's composition is indicated by his somewhat rough and ready treatment of the subject of p.r.o.nunciation; perhaps no more delicate test exists of the grain of an educated person's culture than that of p.r.o.nunciation. It is far more subtle than orthography or grammar, and pleasure in conversation, when a.n.a.lyzed, will show this fine sense of sound and articulation to be the last element.

If any one had asked Webster upon what part of his Dictionary he had expended the most time and now set the highest value, he would undoubtedly have answered at once the etymology, and whatever related to the history and derivation of words. The greater part of the time given continuously, from 1807 to 1826, to the elaboration of his Dictionary was spent upon this department; his severest condemnation of Johnson was upon the score of his ignorance in these particulars, and the credit which he took to himself was frank and sincere. There can be no doubt that he worked hard; there can be no doubt, either, that he had his way to make almost unaided by previous explorers. The science of comparative philology is of later birth; the English of Webster's day were no better equipped than he for the task which he undertook, except so far as they were trained by scholarship to avoid an empirical method. Horne Tooke was the man who opened Webster's eyes, and him he followed so long as he followed anybody. But Tooke was a guesser, and Webster, with all his deficiencies, had always a strong reliance upon system and method. He made guesses also, but he thought they were scientific a.n.a.lyses, and he came to the edge of real discoveries without knowing it.

The fundamental weakness of Webster's work in etymology lay in his reliance upon external likenesses and the limitation of his knowledge to mere vocabularies. It was not an idle pedantry which made him marshal an imposing array of words from Oriental languages; he was on the right track when he sought for a common ground upon which Indo-European languages could meet, but he lacked that essential knowledge of grammatical forms, without which a knowledge of the vocabulary is liable to be misleading. His comparison of languages may be compared to the earlier labors of students in comparative anatomy who mistook merely external resemblances for structural h.o.m.ology. It would be idle to inst.i.tute any inquiry into the agreement of the 1828 edition with the latest edition. All of Webster's original work, as he regarded it, has been swept away, and the etymology reconstructed by Dr. Mahn, of Berlin, in accordance with a science which did not exist in Webster's day. The immense labor which Webster expended remains only as a witness to that indomitable spirit which enabled him to keep steadfastly to his self-imposed task through years of isolation.

The definitions in Webster's first edition offer an almost endless opportunity for comment. He found Johnson's definitions wanting in exactness, and often rather explanations than definitions. For his part he aimed at a somewhat plainer work. He was under no temptation, as Johnson was, to use a fine style, but was rather disposed to take another direction and use an excessive plainness of speech, amplifying his definition by a reference in detail to the synonymous words. It must be said, however, that Webster was often unnecessarily rambling in his account of a word, as when, for instance, under the word _magnanimity_ he writes: "Greatness of mind; that elevation or dignity of soul which encounters danger and trouble with tranquillity and firmness, which raises the possessor above revenge, and makes him delight in acts of benevolence,--which makes him disdain injustice and meanness, and prompts him to sacrifice personal ease, interest, and safety for the accomplishment of useful and n.o.ble objects;" in the latest Webster the same terms are used but with a judicious compression. Johnson's account reads, "Greatness of mind; bravery; elevation of soul." Webster was disposed also to mingle rather more encyclopaedic information with his definitions than a severer judgment of the limits of a dictionary now permits. Thus under the word _bishop_, besides ill.u.s.trative pa.s.sages, he gives at length the mode of election in the English Church, and also that used in the Episcopal Church in America. But this fullness of description was often a positive addition. Here again a comparison may be made with Johnson. Under the word _telescope_, Johnson simply says: "A long gla.s.s by which distant objects are viewed." Webster: "An optical instrument employed in viewing distant objects, as the heavenly bodies.

It a.s.sists the eye chiefly in two ways: first, by enlarging the visual angle under which a distant object is seen, and thus magnifying that object; and secondly, by collecting and conveying to the eye a larger beam of light than would enter the naked organ, and thus rendering objects distinct and visible which would otherwise be indistinct and invisible. Its essential parts are the _object-gla.s.s_, which collects the beams of light and forms an image of the object, and the _eyegla.s.s_, which is a microscope by which the image is magnified." The latest editors have found nothing to change in this definition and nothing to add, except a long account of the several kinds of telescopes. In the introduction and the definition of words employed in science Webster was for the time in advance of Johnson, as the present Webster is far in advance of the first from the natural increase in the importance and number of these terms. But Webster did not merely use his advantages; he had a keener sense than Johnson of the relative weight of such words.

Johnson harbored them as unliterary, but Webster welcomed them as a part of the growing vocabulary of the people.

Webster claimed to have nearly doubled the number of words given in Johnson, even after he had excluded a number which found their place in Johnson. He swelled the list, it is true, by the use of compounds under _un_ and similar prefixes, but the noticeable fact remains that he incorporated in the Dictionary a vast number of words which previously had led a private and secluded life in special word-books. His object being to make a dictionary for the American people, his ambition was to produce a book which should render all other books of its cla.s.s unnecessary. Webster himself enumerates the words added in his Dictionary under five heads:--

1. Words of common use, among which he notes: grand-jury, grand-juror, eulogist, consignee, consignor, mammoth, maltreatment, iceberg, parachute, malpractice, fracas, entailment, perfectibility, glacier, fire-warden, safety-valve, savings-bank, gaseous, lithographic, peninsular, repealable, retaliatory, dyspeptic, missionary, nervine, meteoric, mineralogical, reimbursable; to quarantine, revolutionize, retort, patent, explode, electioneer, reorganize, magnetize.

2. Participles of verbs, previously omitted, and often having an adjective value.

3. Terms of frequent occurrence in historical works, especially those derived from proper names, such as Shemitic, Augustan, Gregorian.

4. Legal terms.

5. Terms in the arts and sciences. This was then the largest storehouse, as it has since been, and the reader may be reminded that this great start in lexicography was coincident with the beginning of modern scientific research.

The greatest interest, however, which Webster's vocabulary has for us is in its justification of the t.i.tle to his Dictionary. It was an American Dictionary, and no one who examines it attentively can fail to perceive how unmistakably it grounds itself on American use. Webster had had an American education; he made his dictionary for the American people, and as in orthography and p.r.o.nunciation he followed a usage which was mainly American, in his words and definitions he knew no authority beyond the usage of his own country. Webster's Dictionary of 1807 had already furnished Pickering with a large number of words for his vocabulary of supposed Americanisms, and Webster had replied, defending the words against the charge of corruption; the Dictionary of 1828 would have supplied many more of the same cla.s.s. The Americanism, as an English scholar of that day would have judged it, was either in the word itself or in some special application of it. Webster, like many later writers, pointed out that words which had their origin in English local use had here simply become of general service, owing to the freedom of movement amongst the people and the constant tendency toward uniformity of speech. The subject has been carefully treated, and it is unnecessary to consider it here. Enough for us to remember that Webster was not singling out words as Americanisms, but incorporating in the general language all these terms, and calling the record of entire product an American Dictionary of the English Language. The reader may be entertained by a selection of these words and definitions, taken somewhat at random from the vast number of undiscriminated words in the Dictionary, and containing often Webster's rather angry championship.

"Whittle, _v. t._ To pare, or cut off the surface of a thing with a small knife. Some persons have a habit of _whittling_, and are rarely seen without a penknife in their hands for that purpose. [_This is, I believe, the only use of this word in New England._]

"Tackle, _v. t._ To harness; as to tackle a horse into a gig, sleigh, coach, or wagon. [_A legitimate and common use of the word in America._]

2. To seize; to lay hold of; as, a wrestler tackles his antagonist. This is a common popular use of the word in New England, though not elegant.

But it retains the primitive idea, to put on, to fall or throw on." The former of these definitions is followed in the latest Webster by the brief parentheses [Prov. Eng. Colloq. U. S.].

"Roiling, _ppr._ Rendering turbid; or exciting the pa.s.sion of anger.

[NOTE: This word is as legitimate as any in the language.]

"Memorialist, _n._ One who writes a memorial. _Spectator._ 2. One who presents a memorial to a legislative or other body, or to a person. _U.

States._

"Emporium. A place of merchandize; a town or city of trade; particularly, a city or town of extensive commerce, or in which an extensive commerce centers, or to which sellers and buyers resort from different countries: such are London, Amsterdam, and Hamburg. New York will be an emporium.

"Emptyings, _n._ The lees of beer, cider, etc.

"Fall, _n._ The fall of the leaf; the season when leaves fall from trees; the autumn.

"Avails, _n._, _plu._ Profits or proceeds. It is used in New England for the proceeds of goods sold, or for rents, issues, or profits.

"Ball, _n._ An entertainment of dancing; originally and peculiarly at the invitation and expense of an individual; but the word is used in America for a dance at the expense of the attendant.

"Beadle. An officer in a university whose chief business is to walk with a mace, before the masters, in a public procession; or, as in America, before the president, trustees, faculty, and students of a college in a procession, at public commencements.

"Commemoration, _n._ The act of calling to remembrance, by some solemnity; the act of honoring the memory of some person or event, by solemn celebration. The feast of sh.e.l.ls at Plymouth, in Ma.s.sachusetts, is an annual commemoration of the first landing of our ancestors in 1620.