Webster's dictionary turns 200. What's next?
by amy
200 years ago this month Noah Webster published "A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language" to the horror of English language purists who were shocked by the Americanized spellings (such as "honor" instead of "honour"), the inclusion of new words American words, and the elimination of ancient British words such as "fishefy." But Webster's aim--to promote homegrown culture and reflect the language America was actually speaking--proved highly successful and today there are hundreds of dictionaries and books devoted to American English usage such as last year's Right, Wrong and Risky: A Dictionary of Today's American English Usage and Contemporary American Slang. There's also every manner of online dictionary, notably the collaborative wiki dictionary Wiktionary, an offshoot of Wikipedia. And that's just a start, since collabulary--a new word worth looking up, by the way--may alter the digital dictionary in ways Noah Webster could never have imagined.
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