Reading Joshua Kendall’s smart new biography of the pioneering lexicographer Noah Webster Jr. (1758-1843 ... of 1775 -- it included 70,000 words, all defined with a “purely American flavor ...

he added new words like skunk and squash. The book wasn’t the big-seller that the Blue-Backed Speller had been. Webster had to mortgage his house to produce a second volume. Noah Webster died on ...

Today marks the 256th birthday of Noah Webster ... edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary that gets released about every 10 years, we often hear about the words added, but what ...

People often introduce a definition of a word by saying, “Webster says . . . “ The truth is, Noah Webster himself — the founder of American lexicography, or dictionary-making — hasn’t ...

A man named Noah ... Webster believed that Americans should have their own textbooks rather than rely on English books. He created a speller that taught students to read, spell and pronounce words ...

DEAR RICHARD LEDERER: In reading a short biography of Noah Webster, I was impressed by the number of languages he learned (27?) in order to trace the etymology of the words in his dictionaries.

Happy Dictionary Day, word-nerds! This is the official holiday in which we celebrate the birth of Noah Webster, who would be 254 years old if he were still living and breathing on this planet.