Websterisms: A Collection of Words and Definitions Set Forth by the Founding Father of American English

"A national language is a national tie, and what country wants it more than America?"
-- Noah Webster

What makes American English American? In 1800, irascible patriot Noah Webster set out to answer this question by tirelessly recording the vocabulary of a novel breed -- the American citizen. Though he was a political conservative, his American Dictionary of the English Language was born out of his deeply held and profoundly democratic conviction that language was by and for the people. A ...