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Inside, too, the schoolhouse was bright and shining. The walls of new lumber were clean and smelled fresh. Sunshine streamed in from the eastern windows. Across the whole end of the room was a clean, new blackboard. Before it stood the teacher's desk, a boughten desk, smoothly varnished. It gleamed honey-colored in the sunlight, and on its flat top lay a large Webster's Unabridged Dictionary. -These Happy Golden Years, Chapter 18, "The Perry School"

Today is Dictionary Day, named in honor of the famous American wordsmith, Noah Webster (1758-1843). Webster first published his "blue back" speller, the standard speller for generations of Americans, followed by his American Dictionary of the English Language (1828), so popular that the name "Webster's" became synonymous with dictionary. Although highly respected, the cost of a dictionary was astronomical for the times at $15 to $20, and the book sold poorly.

Following Webster's death, Charles and George Merriam purchased the large stock of unsold and expensive Webster's dictionaries, plus they purchased the right to publish any revisions. Their new, shorter 1847 edition, at $6.00, was an immediate success. Building on Noah Webster's original idea that the American nation needed a dictionary that reflected its distinctive use of the English language, C. & G. Merriam (later Merriam-Webster's) has been setting the standards for American English for the past 150 years.

The 1847 edition was followed by a revised edition in 1864, overhauling Noah Webster's dictionary, and the first to be known as unabridged. Subsequent editions were published in 1856, 1859, 1864, 1875, 1879, and 1882. In the early 1880s, the school board ordered four copies of Webster's Unabridged Dictionary; an 1882 edition sat on Mr. Owen's desk, and was used by Laura Ingalls.
- posted by pioneergirl at 12:36 AM