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

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 word's popularity, no matter how lowly its origins, was its criterion for inclusion. Webster's original American dictionary, the granddaddy of them all, helped define the American character.