June 28, 2023 • 43 mins
Noah Webster Jr. and Joseph Emerson Worcester were both born in New England, both went to Yale, and both compiled multiple dictionaries during their lifetimes. But they were very different men, and those differences led to a lot of conflict.
Research:
- "Joseph Emerson Worcester." Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1936. Gale In Context: U.S. History, link.gale.com/apps/doc/BT2310000221/GPS?u=mlin_n_melpub&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=28ed0fad. Accessed 13 June 2023.
- "Joseph Emerson Worcester." Oxford Reference. . . Date of access 13 Jun. 2023, https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803124726182
- Amherst College Library. “An Exhibit Commemorating the 250th Anniversary of Noah Webster’s Birth October 16, 1758.” Archives and Special Collections Department. https://www.amherst.edu/library/archives/exhibitions/webster
- Bartels, Paul S. "Webster, Noah." American Governance, edited by Stephen Schechter, et al., vol. 5, Macmillan Reference USA, 2016, pp. 291-293. Gale In Context: U.S. History, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX3629100736/GPS?u=mlin_n_melpub&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=3724fc61. Accessed 13 June 2023.
- Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Joseph Emerson Worcester". Encyclopedia Britannica, 17 Mar. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joseph-Emerson-Worcester. Accessed 13 June 2023.
- Cassedy, Tim. “’A Dictionary Which We Do Not Want’: Defining America against Noah Webster, 1783–1810.” The William and Mary Quarterly , Vol. 71, No. 2 (April 2014). Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5309/willmaryquar.71.2.0229
- Cmiel, Kenneth. "Dictionaries." Dictionary of American History, edited by Stanley I. Kutler, 3rd ed., vol. 3, Charles Scribner's Sons, 2003, pp. 22-23. Gale In Context: U.S. History, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX3401801214/GPS?u=mlin_n_melpub&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=b1842afb. Accessed 13 June 2023.
- Dobbs, Christopher. “Noah Webster and the Dream of a Common Language.” Connecticut History. 5/28/2021. https://connecticuthistory.org/noah-webster-and-the-dream-of-a-common-language/
- Garner, Bryan A. "Under an Orthographic Spell: Part I." National Review, vol. 75, no. 2, 6 Feb. 2023, p. 50. Gale OneFile: Business, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A734881576/GPS?u=mlin_n_melpub&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=705eb3a3. Accessed 13 June 2023.
- Garner, Bryan A. "Under an Orthographic Spell: Part II." National Review, vol. 75, no. 4, 6 Mar. 2023, p. 46. Gale OneFile: Business, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A737639557/GPS?u=mlin_n_melpub&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=59f8ff8f. Accessed 13 June 2023.
- McDavid, Raven I.. "Noah Webster". Encyclopedia Britannica, 24 May. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Noah-Webster-American-lexicographer. Accessed 14 June 2023.
- McHugh, Jess. “The Nationalist Roots of Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary.” The Paris Review. 3/30/2018. https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/03/30/noah-websters-american-english/
- Merriam-Webster. “Noah Webster and America's First Dictionary.” https://www.merriam-webster.com/about-us/americas-first-dictionary
- Micklethwait, David. “Ghost-hunting?: The Search for Henry Bohn's First Worcester Dictionary.” Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America, Volume 38, Issue 1, 2017, pp. 47-66. https://doi.org/10.1353/dic.2017.0001
- Noah Webster House and West Hartford Historical Society. “Noah Webster History.” https://noahwebsterhouse.org/noahwebsterhistory/
- Skinner, David. “Noah Webster, Chronicler of Disease.” HUMANITIES, Spring 2021, Volume 42, Number 2. https://www.neh.gov/article/noah-webster-chronicler-disease
- Yazawa, Melvin. “Webster, Noah.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/68670
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
This is part two of our two parter on the
Dictionary Wars, and unlike a lot of our two parters,
I think this one probably stands on its own pretty
well if you're listening out of order, because in part
one we talked about the lives of Noah Webster Junior
and Joseph Emerson Worcester. They were both born in New England,
both went to Yale University back when it was a
(00:39):
very small school known as Yale College. Both of them
compiled multiple dictionaries during their lifetimes. But beyond that, these
two men were really pretty different. Webster was known for
being hard to get along with and opinionated, and for
doing stuff like publishing praise of his own work and
attacking his critics under false now as, Wooster's reputation was
(01:03):
more as a kind, patient, careful man with very high
standards for research and for accuracy. Webster advocated for the
United States to have its own English language and literary tradition,
including following different standards for spelling. Wooster, on the other hand,
meticulously cross referenced a lot of different sources to arrive
(01:25):
at what he believed to be each word's best current use.
If he concluded that that best use currently was a
British one, that is what he went with. A lot
of prominent people and institutions thought Worcester's dictionaries were more
accurate and more reliable than Webster's, and setting aside the
(01:46):
whole question of British or American influence on the language. Honestly,
they really weren't wrong. The Dictionary Wars grew out of
Webster's publisher's decision to have Woocester create an abridgment of
one of his dictionaries, an abridgment that they hoped would
smooth out issues that were definitely there in terms of
(02:10):
inconsistency and accuracy and if you are really into this
whole story and also a bunch of family drama and
more of the broader historical context. The Dictionary Wars by
Peter Martin was one of the sources for this episode.
It has all that it's one of those books that
I really love. It's by an academic press, but also
(02:32):
really accessible. It didn't feel like reading it that I
was buried in an academic jargon. Noah Webster, Junior's American
Dictionary of the English Language came out in eighteen twenty eight.
It contained more than sixty five thousand words, along with
their definitions and usage examples. There were also etymologies, although
(02:53):
Webster's thoughts on etymology were informed by his belief that
the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel presented a
historical truth, and overall his etymological theories have been discredited.
This is a very large book printed into quarto volumes,
meaning that during printing each large sheet of paper was
(03:13):
folded twice to make eight pages. That meant that it
was expensive. Webster also had some vocal critics. He had
previously advocated extensive spelling reforms to American English, like dropping
all silent letters, standardizing which letters represented each sounds so
(03:35):
like both chorus and church start with ch So Webster
proposed spelling chorus as ko rus instead, more reflecting what
it actually sounds like. While there were people who thought
English spelling was nonsensical and did need to be reformed,
others found this whole idea absurd. Webster dropped a lot
(03:59):
of these changes, but not all of them from this dictionary.
But that also meant that the American Dictionary of the
English Language contradicted some of Webster's previously published material, and
there were also contradictions and errors within the dictionary itself,
like words spelled one way in their own entry and
then spelled differently in the definitions of other words. One
(04:22):
of Webster's most vocal public critics was a school teacher
named Lyman Cobb, who started publishing his own spelling books
and other resources rather than using Webster. Cobb started publishing
in depth criticisms of Webster's work in newspapers in eighteen
twenty seven. So Webster's publisher, Sherman Converse, wanted to put
(04:43):
out an abridged version of the American Dictionary of the
English Language, a shorter, more concise, single volume that would
ideally be free of at least some of the inconsistencies
and any asyncrasies that were scattered through Webster's original work.
Webster was pretty exhausted from the work he had already
done on this dictionary. He'd also moved on to another project,
(05:06):
which was a version of the Christian Bible, and Converse
knew that Webster would be deeply opposed to the kind
of changes that he wanted to make, so he teamed
up with Webster's son in law, Chauncey Goodrich, who was
a professor of rhetoric at Yale and had become heavily
involved in Webster's dictionary pursuits. They then hired Joseph Emerson
(05:28):
Worcester to do the abridgment and worked with him on it.
That kind of recaps a little brief part of Monday's episode,
and as we noted last time, Wooster had already built
a reputation for accuracy, thoroughness, knowledgeability, and just good research.
He was working on his own dictionary, one that would
be straightforward and suitable for general use as well as
(05:52):
use in schools. He had already abridged Samuel Johnson's seventeen
fifty five Dictionary of the English Language didn't really want
to abridge another dictionary. He also knew he would be
creating a dictionary that would be a direct competitor to
the one that he wanted to do on his own,
but he did finally take the job. Wooster started working
(06:14):
on this as the unabridged Dictionary was being printed and
Webster did know about this abridgement. He ultimately agreed to
send Worcester a copy of the first volume of the
unabridged version in July of eighteen twenty eight, before it
was publicly available.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
But it became.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Clear pretty quickly that what Wooster was being asked to
do was not remotely what Webster would have wanted him
to do, and Converse and Goodrich intentionally cut Webster out
of the loop as much as possible because they knew
he wouldn't like it. Wooster was also in just really
an awkward position. He was anxious about how Webster would
(06:54):
respond to this abridgement, but he apparently had good Riches
and Converses full support, so it was like he was
doing what the people who hired him wanted him to do.
They liked it, but he knew that Webster himself would not.
During all of this, he had good Rich actually became
pretty good friends.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
I understand this and I have a behind the scenes story. Okay.
He did have some disagreements with the publishing team, though
they wanted to include John Walker's Key to the Classical
pronunciation of Greek, Latin and Scripture proper names as part
of the dictionary. Since this was originally published in Britain,
including it in an American dictionary wasn't technically a violation
(07:38):
of American copyright law. But Walker's Key had been part
of the abridgment of Samuel Johnson's Dictionary that Worcester had
completed in eighteen twenty eight, and Wooster was afraid that
it would be seen as a conflict of interest if
it was part of Webster's dictionary as well. Ultimately, Worcester's
abridgment of Webster's dictionary came out as a one volume
(07:59):
work in a eighteen twenty nine. It was roughly half
as long as Webster's full version. Most of Webster's preface
and other introductory material were left out, Walker's Key was
added in. Worcester had also added some words and corrected
various errors and contradictions. This abridgment sold for six dollars,
(08:20):
compared to twenty dollars for Webster's unabridged dictionary. That seems
like a luxury item in the eighteen twenty Yes, the
twenty dollars dictionary extraordinarily expensive. Six dollars dictionary is still
pretty expensive. Like this was a lot of people really
couldn't afford to just have a dictionary in their home.
(08:42):
It was a lot of money. Unsurprisingly, Webster was outraged
when he saw the finished abridgement. He was really angry
about the changes themselves, but to add insult to injury,
it was obvious that a lot of the changes addressed
some of the criticisms put forth by Lyman Cobb. So
to Webster it felt like his own publisher had agreed
(09:03):
with his critics and made changes to his work behind
his back, rather than standing up for him. We mentioned
in Part one that Webster hated Worcester's abridgment so much
that he sold the rights to it. Ultimately, the buyer,
as we said, was his son in law, Chauncey Goodrich,
who bought the rights for a lot less than they
were probably worth. He kind of argued that he had
(09:24):
done a lot of unpaid work in preparing this and
other dictionaries. But Webster then also published his own, smaller
version of his dictionary with a different publisher. This was
a Dictionary of the English Language for the use of
primary schools in the Counting House, which he published through
Hezekiah Howe in eighteen twenty nine. This led to some fallout.
(09:50):
Converse's handlaying of the abridgement caused a huge rift between
him and Webster, and Converse went bankrupt in eighteen thirty three.
Good Rich had trouble finding a new p publisher for
Webster's work, because Webster had already demonstrated that if his
publisher did something he didn't like, he might just go
print another dictionary with a competitor. Finally, Goodrich found some
(10:11):
interest from Norman and Joseph White of New York, but
based on Webster's track record, they required him to sign
affidavits to try to prevent that same thing from playing
out again. This seems to have led to some back
and forth during which the publisher kept pushing Goodrich to
get Webster to sign on to increasingly restrictive terms. During
(10:33):
all of that back and forth, Goodrich also convinced Webster
to sign over not only the rights to the abradement,
but also ownership of the plates that had been used
to print them. Webster did this, also signing a statement
that he had done so spontaneously and quote without the
solicitation or previous knowledge of any person. Whatever this was
(10:56):
really untrue, it added to the perception amongst a Webster's
family that Goodrich was taking advantage of him. It's kind
of hard to interpret it in any other way. Yeah,
about a year after this, Wooster was publicly accused of
plagiarizing from Noah Webster Junior. And we'll get to that
(11:16):
after a sponsor break.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
As we already talked about, Noah Webster Junior was not
happy at all when he saw how Joseph Emerson Wooster
had abridged his dictionary. And then he was also not
happy at all when he saw Worcester's comprehensive pronouncing an
Explanatory Dictionary of the English Language, which came out in
eighteen thirty. In an eighteen thirty one letter, Webster claimed that,
(11:48):
among other things, Worcester had inflated the number of words
in his own dictionary by including terms from old dictionaries
that weren't even being used in English anymore. For a
lot of people we talked about, dictionaries were really expensive.
The deciding factor in deciding which one to buy a
lot of the time was just which one had the
most words. And so he was basically saying he boosted
(12:11):
his word count to be bigger than my dictionary just
with old, obsolete words to sell more stuff.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
He puffed it up with blunderbusses. But then on November
twenty sixth, eighteen thirty four, an anonymous letter titled Webster's
Dictionary was published in the Worcester Palladium. We're just going
to call this newspaper the Palladium. It was named for
the city of Worcester, Massachusetts. It was not affiliated with
Joseph Emerson Worcester. Although this letter was published anonymously, it's
(12:41):
entirely possible that it was written by Noah Webster. He
already had an established track record of promoting himself or
criticizing others through anonymous or pseudonymous writing. This letter also
called for a stronger copyright law. That was something Webster
had vocally advocated for.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
This letter set in part quote, A gross plagiarism has
been committed by mister J. E. Worcester on the literary
property of Noah Webster, esquire. It is well known that
mister Webster has spent a life which is now somewhat advanced,
in writing a dictionary of the English Language, which he
published in eighteen twenty eight into quarto volumes. Three of
(13:23):
regiments have since been made one in octavo form, and
two still smaller for families than primary schools. This letter
went on to say that Worcester had been hired quote
to aid in the drudgery of producing these abridgments, and
then claimed that Worcester had appropriated the quote labors, acquisitions
and productions of mister Webster to his own benefit. The
(13:44):
letter claimed that Worcester's dictionary was quote a close imitation
of Webster's and expressed some regret at how many primary
schools were now using it. This basically ended with a
buyer beware that people should look into how Worcester got
this work before purchasing it. One of Worcester's friends saw
this letter and told him about it, and on December tenth,
(14:07):
The Palladium printed is his response.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
His response called these allegations grossly false. A letter war
followed in the pages of The Palladium, with the first
letter actually signed by Webster himself on January twenty fifth,
eighteen thirty five. This signed letter included a list of
one hundred and twenty one specific words that Webster claimed
(14:30):
had been taken from his dictionary. That added one hundred
words to an earlier list that had been published in
a different letter, Worcester countered by citing other earlier dictionaries
that had included all those same words, including thirty seven
that were found in his own abridgement of Samuel Johnson's Dictionary,
which had come out before Webster's. He also pointed out
(14:54):
a handful of words that Webster claimed Worcester had lifted
from his work, but which were not actual in Webster's
dictionaries at all, and he noted that compiling a dictionary
does not give a person ownership of the words in it,
that the words belong quote to all who write and
speak the language. Webster's response conveniently dropped the charge of
(15:17):
copied words, moving on instead to other alleged wrongdoing on
Wister's part, with those wrongs, including actually citing Webster's work
in places where he cited it. So first Webster had
claimed that Worster copied his dictionary without attribution, and then
(15:37):
he later complained about Webster having actually cited him specifically,
including giving attribution to him where it was due. Basically,
Worcester kept responding to Webster's allegations, but then Webster kept
moving the goalposts and trying to make sure he had
the last word. This is like every Reddit argument. It
(15:58):
really is. You didn't give me credit, Yes I did.
We'll keep my name out of your mouth like I don't.
You can't win. There's no way. When this letter war
fizzled out, it had gone on for well over a year,
Wooster found all of it enormously upsetting. He had always
been so careful and so methodical, and this kind of
attack on his character and his work was particularly hurtful.
(16:20):
He had also put extensive research into his own dictionary,
including collecting an enormous library of works on lexicography. Aside
from that, though, he just was not the kind of
man to have a big public letter war in the
pages of the newspaper, and he hated that he had
been dragged into one.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
About eight years after the end of this dispute in
the pages of the Palladium, on May twenty eight, eighteen
forty three, Noah Webster Junior died. His executors seemed to
have understood that the work he left behind was both
valuable and a liability. There were just so many different
editions of his dictionaries and his other published work, just
(17:02):
also so many inconsistencies among them and within them. Webster
had named five executors, with his son in law William
Ellsworth chief among them. Elswhere seems to have had a
vision for his father in law's legacy, basically to make
Webster's synonymous with quality and consistency, to turn the dictionaries
(17:23):
into a standard, uniform resource all across the country. To
do this, he had to deal not only with Webster's
erratic track record, but also with a lot of divisions
within the family. Webster's son in law, Chauncey Goodrich, had
played a huge part in the publishing of some of
his dictionaries, including connecting him to publisher Sherman Converse in
(17:44):
the first place, but Webster had fallen out with Goodrich
and Converse over their handling of Worcester's abridgment of his work.
Goodrich was not named as one of Webster's five executors,
which definitely seemed deliberate. Also, Webster had reduced Julia Goodrich's
share of her inheritance based on the income to be
(18:07):
earned from Worcester's abridgment, which is something that her husband
held the rights to. There were also disagreements within the
family about Webster's philosophies on language and spelling. So to
transform Noah Webster into an icon of consistency and quality,
Ellsworth really had to get the whole family on board,
(18:29):
and he had to work really hard to do it,
getting sign off from everyone, regardless of whether they had
been named as an executor to the estate. He also
had to buy out a publisher that had bought partial
rights to Webster's original spelling book from his son William,
and he had to find someone to finish printing the
eighteen forty one American Dictionary of the English Language corrected
(18:52):
and enlarged. More than one thousand copies of this dictionary
had been printed, but they were not bound, so they
couldn't be sold. That last one was tricky, that eighteen
forty one dictionary was a two volume work that wasn't
likely to sell as well as something that was more
compact and more affordable. But also having the pages just
(19:14):
sitting there already printed and unbound and unfinished, as like
something someone could buy like that was wasteful and it
represented a lost investment of both time and money. The
first buyer that Ellsworth found for these pages didn't wind
up doing anything with them, and the pages were then
eventually sold to Charles and George Merriam, who were printers
(19:37):
and booksellers based in Springfield, Massachusetts. The Merriams and Ellsworth
were of like minds on Webster's dictionaries and started negotiating
with other members of the family to print a new edition,
this time with Chauncey Goodrich as editor. Based on their history,
this does not seem like a hiring choice that Webster
himself would have approved of, or the members of his
(20:01):
family who thought Goodrich had taken advantage of him. It
just seems like a weird move. I mean, it's a
weird move in terms of people's feelings, but in terms
of putting out an accurate.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Goodrich was totally aware of how
contentious him being the editor was likely to be, so
he insisted that there had to be immaculately clear communication
about everything from all parties involved. He wanted not only
to get the approval of everyone in the family, but
(20:33):
also to make sure that that approval was based on
a clear understanding that he was going to be editing
this dictionary as he thought fit, which meant in a
much more mainstream conservative way than Webster probably would have wanted.
Good Rich did do this editing work, and in terms
of Webster's proposed spelling reforms, Goodrich really wanted to keep
(20:56):
only the ones that had become fairly widely an adopted
among American English speakers, like dropping the U from words
like color or labor, or changing theater from tch e
a tr to tch e a t e r, like
(21:16):
a lot of those things that today are just we
recognized they're spelled differently between American English and British English,
like a lot of these were the things that Goodrich
really kept in terms of the spelling reforms, so there
was no more women spelled wimmi n or as another example,
thumb without the silent B on the end. Goodrich also
(21:39):
wanted to get rid of any unsubstantiated etymologies and clean
up all the contradictions among the spellings and definitions. Basically,
there was so much that he wanted to change and
fix that he had to be kind of careful in
how he talked to the Miriams about it. He was
afraid that if he was super honest, he would make
them think that Noah Webster had not really known what
(22:02):
he was doing, and that putting out another dictionary under
his name would be a bad investment. Although most of
Webster's family eventually came around to the view that his
work really should be edited and standardized, another son in law,
William Fowler, did not. While the Merriams and Goodrich were
at work on a new edition of the Dictionary, Fowler
(22:23):
went to another publisher to work on a different abridgement,
one that left all of Webster's inconsistencies and eccentricities intact.
This led to the Merriams and various Webster sons in
law to hold a big meeting to do damage control,
both to make sure Fowler's edition of the Dictionary was
consistent with what they were doing and to remove him
(22:46):
from any editorial decision making. All of this strife and
family infighting eventually became so stressful that Goodrich thought pretty
seriously about quitting. If you're like what happened to Joseph Wooston, well,
he was working on a new edition of his dictionary,
and everybody involved with this new edition of Webster's Dictionary
(23:10):
knew about that and saw it as a threat. Wooster
did not need to clean up and standardize his work
before publishing it. It was already cleaned up and pretty standardized,
he already had a reputation as an exceptional researcher and lexicographer. Also, overall,
just sort of generally, Wooster's dictionaries had been better reviewed
(23:32):
and had sold better and been more profitable than Webster's
A lot of times this was just about the fact
that it was more concise, It was a more economical,
affordable book. So the Webster's team was working on a
new dictionary, knowing that it was very likely to have
a serious competitor, but without actually knowing when that competing
(23:54):
work was going to hit the market, what its format
would be, its intended audience, based anything else. Wooster's Universal
and Critical Dictionary of the English Language was finally published
in eighteen forty six, running almost nine hundred fifty pages long,
including about seventy five pages of introductory material. It was
(24:16):
based on Samuel Johnson's Dictionary, as edited by the Reverend H. J. Todd,
the same dictionary that Wooster had abridged earlier in his career,
with tens of thousands of additional words not found in
that dictionary. Wooster's eighteen forty six edition contained about eighty
three thousand words, which was more than any existing dictionary
(24:38):
in its preface, Wooster described this as an attempt to
make a complete vocabulary of the English language. He also
kind of obliquely referenced that earlier plagiarism claim leveled at
him by Noah Webster and that introductory material. He said,
quote with respect to Webster's dictionary, which the compiler several
(24:59):
years since abridged, he is not aware of having taken
a single word or the definition of a word from
that work in the preparation of this, but in relation
to words of various or disputed pronunciation. Webster's authority is
often cited in connection with that of English orthowapists, so
(25:23):
an orthowapist is someone who studies pronunciation. He also praised
Webster as the greatest and most important English lexicographer since
Samuel Johnson. The Merriams were not assuaged by any of this.
They started looking for any evidence they could find that
Worcester was lying when he said he had not taken
(25:44):
a word or definition from Webster's work. They tasked Webster's son, William,
with going through Worcester's new Dictionary to find examples of copying.
William did this but did not find anything. They also
called on experts to write review who's criticizing Worcester's work,
and one of those was Noah Porter of Yale, who,
(26:05):
among other things, suggested that Wooster had included absurd words,
some of them only ever used in writing once, just
to inflate the total. We should note here that the
Miriams were still making use of work that Worcester had
done for Webster while abridging Webster's earlier dictionary, So they
(26:27):
were really trying to frame Worcester as a plagiarist without
really acknowledging their ongoing use of his work that he
had done earlier for Webster and Chancey Goodrich and converse
in that abridgement. Let's try to discredit the guy that
(26:47):
fixed all the problems with this book we're trying to make.
The logic is sloppy. As we mentioned in Part one,
as Wooster's eighteen forty six Dictionary was being printed, he
was undergoing a series of eye surgeries, and afterward he
had partial sight in one eye and was blind in
the other. He was not reading anything during his recovery,
(27:08):
and it seems as though if any of his friends
or family members knew about Porter's criticisms or any of
the other controversy that followed it in the papers. They
did not tell him about it. Bless them honestly.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Yes, you don't need somebody telling you what they wrote
about you in the paper while you're recovering from multiple
eye surgeries.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
In my opinion, let the man rest anyway. In eighteen
forty seven, the Miriams published The American Dictionary of the
English Language by Noah Webster, revised and enlarged by Chauncey A. Goodrich.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
In terms of pages, this was much longer than Worcester's Dictionary,
more than twelve hundred pages, printed as a quarto. Worcester's
dictionary had been printed as an octavos. In addition to
having a larger page count, the pages of Webster's dictionary
themselves were a lot bigger. Basically, this looked like a
(28:02):
way heftier book. While this new dictionary still included some
of Webster's more unusual spellings, they were now accompanied by
more standardized ones, so this was no longer a dictionary
intended to establish a new American English language with new
modes of spelling, breaking away from the rules of British English.
It was a reference people could use to learn and
(28:24):
understand American English as it was spoken. Goodrich also included
Walker's Key, a piece that Webster himself had vocally objected to,
as well as work Worcester had produced for their earlier abridgement.
The Merriams also tried to clean up the image of
Webster himself, including through biographical pieces in newspapers and magazines
(28:46):
that were meant to bolster his image as both a
lexicographer and as a person. In eighteen forty nine, Worcester
finally became aware of Porter's critique of his work that
had come out while he was recovering from surgery, as
well as the controversy that had unfolded in the press.
He expressed some shock that a Yale professor would, by
(29:07):
all appearances, basically put out a hit piece on him
at the direction of a publisher. He also defended himself
against the various allegations that had been levied against him
while he was recovering, and Charles Meriam countered that it
had actually been Worcester's own publishers who had started it.
This all took a weird turn a few years later,
(29:29):
and we're going to start talking about that. After we
paused for a sponsor break. In early August of eighteen
fifty three, Joseph Worster saw an ad for a dictionary
that had been published in London in eighteen fifty one.
(29:51):
This dictionary carried both his name and Webster's name on
the title page, but it did not seem to be
the ridgment that he had created for Webster back in
eighteen twenty nine that would have made sense to have
both of their names on it. It was his own
eighteen forty six dictionary, but with Webster's name added to it.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Wooster wrote to John H. Wilkins at his publisher, Wilkins,
Carter and Company, asking what was going on. Wilkins said
that a colleague, James Brown of Little Brown and Company,
had gone to Europe, and that Wilkins Cartering Company had
given him permission to find a British publisher for Wooster's work.
When a publisher was found, Wilkins had shipped him the plates.
(30:38):
The British publisher, Henry G. Bond, had not printed this
book right away as agreed, and when Wooster's publisher got
in touch with him to ask him why, he kind
of implied that he might back out of the deal.
Sky seems to have been kind of shady. When Bond
did finally print this dictionary, he removed U. Worcester's assertion
(31:02):
of having not taken a single word or the definition
of a word from Webster, and then added Webster's name
to the title page. Wooster's US publisher was understandably baffled
and wrote to Bond demanding an explanation. Bond later made
a statement that he had genuinely thought that what he
(31:22):
had was Wooster's abridgment of Webster's dictionary, and when he
realized it wasn't, it would have been too difficult and
expensive for him to fix the mistake, so he just
went ahead with it. Listen, this doesn't really make sense,
but that was his claim. Yet he had to make
changes to the thing to make it different from the
(31:42):
work he had received. I honestly don't know what was
going on. And then I was just in too deep. Yeah, it's.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
I don't know if he thought that by adding Webster's
name it would sell better or exactly what.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
It doesn't make sense. Uh so this would have been
bad enough.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
Right like this, I had printed something that was Worcester's work,
but he had put Webster's name on it, but then
the Miriams picked this up and then tried to use
it as evidence that Worcester was somehow unscrupulous, even though
this whole thing was entirely beyond his control. The Miriams
also printed a pamphlet in May of eighteen fifty three
titled The English Dictionaries of Webster and Worcester, full of
(32:21):
testimonials that praised Webster as well as criticisms of Worcester,
and claims that Webster's work included errors that Webster had
made in earlier dictionaries but corrected in later ones, to
sort of implying that he had been copying not just
from Webster but from like old, inaccurate Webster. Five months later,
(32:42):
Worcester countered with a pamphlet of his own titled A
Gross Literary Fraud Exposed, relating to the publication of Worcester's
Dictionary in London, which walked through how a British publisher
had added Webster's name to his own work without Worcester's knowledge.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Wooster also tried to get some backup from people who
knew the whole story of his abridgment of Webster's dictionary
and could speak to his work and his character. He
tracked down Sherman Converse, publisher of the earlier abridgment, and
Converse defended him. Wooster printed Converse's defense in a later
edition of his pamphlet, and this led to a prolonged
(33:21):
dispute between Converse and the Merriams that went on for months.
William Draper Swan of Worcester's new publisher, Jenks Hickling and
Swann also published a forty five page pamphlet titled a
Reply to Mister G.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
And C.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
Merriam's Attack on the character of Doctor Wooster and his
Dictionaries that came out in eighteen fifty four.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Worcester also tried to get the support of Chauncey Goodrich,
who he'd had a good working relationship with during that abridgment,
but Goodrich's support at this point was kind of half
hearted at best. He kept doing kind of a both
sides maneuver, qualified buying any defense of Worcester with his
own defense of the Miriams, so saying things like he
(34:04):
didn't think they intended to malign Worcester's character. It really
seems like Goodrich felt like he was caught in the
middle of a dispute that he did not want any
part of. He was in his sixties. He really wanted
to be resting and looking after his own health and
not in this mess.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
I'm just picturing him going, why did I ever take
that job? At this point, that back and forth in
the Worcester Palladium repeated itself on a grander scale, with
Worcester and the Merriams each publishing pamphlets, including in March
of eighteen fifty four a gross literary fraud exposed relating
to the publication of Worcester's Dictionary in London as Webster's Dictionary.
(34:47):
That was not a do over of Worcester's pamphlet. It
was by the Merriams using a nearly identical title to
the one that Worcester had used. It seems like at.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
Some point something passed between Goodrich and Worcester that led
to Worcester dropping this whole subject. Goodrich made a reference
in another letter that he hoped what he had just
said to Wister would have an impact, and then afterwards
Wooster did not respond to the Miriams again. He said
that this had been in a letter. Nobody has actually
(35:19):
found Goodrich's letter. We don't really know what it might
have said. Whatever it was, though, it seems to have
destroyed these two men's previously friendly relationship. There's no other
surviving correspondence between them after this point. Kind of mysterious,
but Worcester seems to have given up. Meanwhile, the Merriams
(35:40):
and Jenks, Hickling and Swann were each promoting Webster's and
Worcester's dictionaries respectively. This included the Miriams using a quote
from past podcast subject Washington Irving in their advertising. They
had sent him a copy of Webster's eighteen forty seven dictionary,
and he had thanked them for it, saying it was useful,
but noting that he wasn't making it his standard for spelling.
(36:03):
But the Merriams framed this in their advertisements almost as
an endorsement. He wasn't happy about that. Who would be
the rivalry between Webster and Worcester, which, again, rivalry not
the greatest word. This was mostly instigated and perpetuated by
the Merriams. This continued as Worcester put out another dictionary
(36:26):
in eighteen fifty five, and then the Merriams hired Webster's
old critic, Lyman Cobb as an editor for a new
Webster Dictionary. Then, when the Miriams heard that Wooster was
planning an illustrated dictionary, they scurried to commission a bunch
of woodcuts for their next edition of Webster's Dictionary. The
(36:47):
pages of that dictionary had already been set, though, so
these woodcuts were printed in a special section at the beginning.
So instead of say, having say like apple with a
little woodcut picture of an apple next to it, the
apple picture would be in a separate section at the
beginning of the book. These woodcuts were also criticized as
not being particularly good in their quality, which is not
(37:09):
really surprising if they were a rush job. However, the
Miriams did beat Wooster to market with this dictionary plus
woodcuts section that came out in eighteen fifty nine, and
Wooster's two volume Illustrated Dictionary of the English Language came
out the following year. This last dictionary of Wooster's was
(37:30):
very well received, with some reviewers declaring him the clear
winner in the rivalry between Webster and Worcester. For Worcester's part,
he avoided getting involved in any of the press about it.
He was upset that this so called rivalry had ever
even happened, and the start of the US Civil War
in eighteen sixty one made all of it just seem
even more frivolous. Joseph Emerson Worcester died on October twenty seventh,
(37:55):
eighteen sixty five. William Draper Swan had died about a
year before, and that left Wister without one of his
biggest defenders, both in public and as a publisher. Publisher J. P.
Lippencott bought the rights to Worster's dictionaries, and they've remained
in print for decades afterward, But soon it became obvious
(38:15):
that Webster had really become the bigger brand. This was
especially true after the publication of Webster's An American Dictionary
of the English Language in eighteen sixty four. Just to
be clear, Miriam Webster is still my go to source
for spellings and definitions and pronunciations of American English today,
(38:36):
including looking up how to say or Theowhapist for this episode,
which according to Webster can also be or Theopist. But man,
is it weird how we got here?
Speaker 1 (38:47):
Yeah? It's really a big uh. There's a lot of
pr involved, But I too use I call it m
dub because that's how we roll at our house. We're
so familiar with the Merriam Websters. I mean that's my
go to as well, but woof's by the backstory.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
Yeah, And it's a lot of other style guides like
the Associated Press Style Guide, Theicago Manual Style Modern Language
Association either like prefer a Webster's Dictionary as their preferred
dictionary or include a Webster's Dictionary among their preferred dictionaries,
like it, like it really has become a standard resource.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
So it's just it's even knowing.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
What the publishing industry could be like, both in the
US and the UK in the nineteenth century. Knowing this
part of it still just makes it very weird to
me that we did get to this place where a
Miriam Webster Dictionary is like the preferred dictionary in a
lot of different context but sort of started out as
something that was full of weird spellings and contradictions with
(39:54):
the dictionary itself.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
Well, it also makes it seem like dictionaries are such
a hot commodity that you to be the first of market,
and I'm like, were they ever really that big of
an industry? Yeah, I think there's.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
Some validity to the fact that they tended to be
so expensive that an individual household was probably going to
buy only at most one, So being first to market
was really important. Just being first to market with a
dictionary that has hastily created woodcuts in a separate section
(40:28):
at the front cracks me up, right. But then, like
that presumes that they didn't already have their one Do
you know what I mean? Like, hmm, that that whole
thing is kind of predicated on the idea that there's
always like a new searge of people looking for their
one and only diction, their one dictionary.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
Yeah. Yeah, uh So, anyway, do you also have listener mail?
Do have listener mail? This listener mail is from Echo
and Echo said thank you for doing the episode about
sudan Naga. Dear Holly and Tracy, Greetings from Tokyo, Japan.
I just wanted to drop a quick thank you note
for doing the Sudanaga episode. I remember that sudan Naga
(41:10):
was one of many stories at my high school history class,
and he is still somewhat popular historical figure in Japan.
I also wanted to tell you that it is easy
to understand that it was not easy to find detailed
information about sudan Naga and his family because back then
what he did was considered was a big shame, and people,
especially the relatives and people who would know sudan Naga
(41:32):
and his family just ignored the existence of Sudannaga and
the family so they would not be caught by officials
and jailed in the worst case is death penalty. So
Echo offers assistance for future Japanese episodes and says thank
you again for your excellent work. You are my Tokyo
(41:53):
morning commute partners. Your show brightens up my dull and
boring time on my subway ride. PS.
Speaker 2 (41:59):
I wanted to say I'm a cute dog or cat pictures,
but I have an allergy for that. I Mcjamany's pickles
using Rice brand and they are lactic acid and too
small to.
Speaker 1 (42:12):
Take a photo.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
And I'm like, I'm very intrigued by that idea anyway,
even even if it's too small.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
So thank you so much. Echo.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
It is always nice to hear from folks who are
living in a place that we talk about on the show.
In that place, because we talk about the United States
a lot, because that's where we are and that's where
most of our listeners are, and so it's always great
when we have something that is from other parts of
the world hearing from people in those places also, So
thank you so much if you would like to write
(42:44):
to us about this or any other podcast or a
history podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. We're also all over
social media at Mister in History. That's where you'll find
our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. And you can subscribe
to our show on the iHeartRadio app. And we're for
else you'd like to get your podcasts. Stuff you Missed
(43:07):
in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
This is part two of our two parter on the
Dictionary Wars, and unlike a lot of our two parters,
I think this one probably stands on its own pretty
well if you're listening out of order, because in part
one we talked about the lives of Noah Webster Junior
and Joseph Emerson Worcester. They were both born in New England,
both went to Yale University back when it was a
(00:39):
very small school known as Yale College. Both of them
compiled multiple dictionaries during their lifetimes. But beyond that, these
two men were really pretty different. Webster was known for
being hard to get along with and opinionated, and for
doing stuff like publishing praise of his own work and
attacking his critics under false now as, Wooster's reputation was
(01:03):
more as a kind, patient, careful man with very high
standards for research and for accuracy. Webster advocated for the
United States to have its own English language and literary tradition,
including following different standards for spelling. Wooster, on the other hand,
meticulously cross referenced a lot of different sources to arrive
(01:25):
at what he believed to be each word's best current use.
If he concluded that that best use currently was a
British one, that is what he went with. A lot
of prominent people and institutions thought Worcester's dictionaries were more
accurate and more reliable than Webster's, and setting aside the
(01:46):
whole question of British or American influence on the language. Honestly,
they really weren't wrong. The Dictionary Wars grew out of
Webster's publisher's decision to have Woocester create an abridgment of
one of his dictionaries, an abridgment that they hoped would
smooth out issues that were definitely there in terms of
(02:10):
inconsistency and accuracy and if you are really into this
whole story and also a bunch of family drama and
more of the broader historical context. The Dictionary Wars by
Peter Martin was one of the sources for this episode.
It has all that it's one of those books that
I really love. It's by an academic press, but also
(02:32):
really accessible. It didn't feel like reading it that I
was buried in an academic jargon. Noah Webster, Junior's American
Dictionary of the English Language came out in eighteen twenty eight.
It contained more than sixty five thousand words, along with
their definitions and usage examples. There were also etymologies, although
(02:53):
Webster's thoughts on etymology were informed by his belief that
the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel presented a
historical truth, and overall his etymological theories have been discredited.
This is a very large book printed into quarto volumes,
meaning that during printing each large sheet of paper was
(03:13):
folded twice to make eight pages. That meant that it
was expensive. Webster also had some vocal critics. He had
previously advocated extensive spelling reforms to American English, like dropping
all silent letters, standardizing which letters represented each sounds so
(03:35):
like both chorus and church start with ch So Webster
proposed spelling chorus as ko rus instead, more reflecting what
it actually sounds like. While there were people who thought
English spelling was nonsensical and did need to be reformed,
others found this whole idea absurd. Webster dropped a lot
(03:59):
of these changes, but not all of them from this dictionary.
But that also meant that the American Dictionary of the
English Language contradicted some of Webster's previously published material, and
there were also contradictions and errors within the dictionary itself,
like words spelled one way in their own entry and
then spelled differently in the definitions of other words. One
(04:22):
of Webster's most vocal public critics was a school teacher
named Lyman Cobb, who started publishing his own spelling books
and other resources rather than using Webster. Cobb started publishing
in depth criticisms of Webster's work in newspapers in eighteen
twenty seven. So Webster's publisher, Sherman Converse, wanted to put
(04:43):
out an abridged version of the American Dictionary of the
English Language, a shorter, more concise, single volume that would
ideally be free of at least some of the inconsistencies
and any asyncrasies that were scattered through Webster's original work.
Webster was pretty exhausted from the work he had already
done on this dictionary. He'd also moved on to another project,
(05:06):
which was a version of the Christian Bible, and Converse
knew that Webster would be deeply opposed to the kind
of changes that he wanted to make, so he teamed
up with Webster's son in law, Chauncey Goodrich, who was
a professor of rhetoric at Yale and had become heavily
involved in Webster's dictionary pursuits. They then hired Joseph Emerson
(05:28):
Worcester to do the abridgment and worked with him on it.
That kind of recaps a little brief part of Monday's episode,
and as we noted last time, Wooster had already built
a reputation for accuracy, thoroughness, knowledgeability, and just good research.
He was working on his own dictionary, one that would
be straightforward and suitable for general use as well as
(05:52):
use in schools. He had already abridged Samuel Johnson's seventeen
fifty five Dictionary of the English Language didn't really want
to abridge another dictionary. He also knew he would be
creating a dictionary that would be a direct competitor to
the one that he wanted to do on his own,
but he did finally take the job. Wooster started working
(06:14):
on this as the unabridged Dictionary was being printed and
Webster did know about this abridgement. He ultimately agreed to
send Worcester a copy of the first volume of the
unabridged version in July of eighteen twenty eight, before it
was publicly available.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
But it became.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Clear pretty quickly that what Wooster was being asked to
do was not remotely what Webster would have wanted him
to do, and Converse and Goodrich intentionally cut Webster out
of the loop as much as possible because they knew
he wouldn't like it. Wooster was also in just really
an awkward position. He was anxious about how Webster would
(06:54):
respond to this abridgement, but he apparently had good Riches
and Converses full support, so it was like he was
doing what the people who hired him wanted him to do.
They liked it, but he knew that Webster himself would not.
During all of this, he had good Rich actually became
pretty good friends.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
I understand this and I have a behind the scenes story. Okay.
He did have some disagreements with the publishing team, though
they wanted to include John Walker's Key to the Classical
pronunciation of Greek, Latin and Scripture proper names as part
of the dictionary. Since this was originally published in Britain,
including it in an American dictionary wasn't technically a violation
(07:38):
of American copyright law. But Walker's Key had been part
of the abridgment of Samuel Johnson's Dictionary that Worcester had
completed in eighteen twenty eight, and Wooster was afraid that
it would be seen as a conflict of interest if
it was part of Webster's dictionary as well. Ultimately, Worcester's
abridgment of Webster's dictionary came out as a one volume
(07:59):
work in a eighteen twenty nine. It was roughly half
as long as Webster's full version. Most of Webster's preface
and other introductory material were left out, Walker's Key was
added in. Worcester had also added some words and corrected
various errors and contradictions. This abridgment sold for six dollars,
(08:20):
compared to twenty dollars for Webster's unabridged dictionary. That seems
like a luxury item in the eighteen twenty Yes, the
twenty dollars dictionary extraordinarily expensive. Six dollars dictionary is still
pretty expensive. Like this was a lot of people really
couldn't afford to just have a dictionary in their home.
(08:42):
It was a lot of money. Unsurprisingly, Webster was outraged
when he saw the finished abridgement. He was really angry
about the changes themselves, but to add insult to injury,
it was obvious that a lot of the changes addressed
some of the criticisms put forth by Lyman Cobb. So
to Webster it felt like his own publisher had agreed
(09:03):
with his critics and made changes to his work behind
his back, rather than standing up for him. We mentioned
in Part one that Webster hated Worcester's abridgment so much
that he sold the rights to it. Ultimately, the buyer,
as we said, was his son in law, Chauncey Goodrich,
who bought the rights for a lot less than they
were probably worth. He kind of argued that he had
(09:24):
done a lot of unpaid work in preparing this and
other dictionaries. But Webster then also published his own, smaller
version of his dictionary with a different publisher. This was
a Dictionary of the English Language for the use of
primary schools in the Counting House, which he published through
Hezekiah Howe in eighteen twenty nine. This led to some fallout.
(09:50):
Converse's handlaying of the abridgement caused a huge rift between
him and Webster, and Converse went bankrupt in eighteen thirty three.
Good Rich had trouble finding a new p publisher for
Webster's work, because Webster had already demonstrated that if his
publisher did something he didn't like, he might just go
print another dictionary with a competitor. Finally, Goodrich found some
(10:11):
interest from Norman and Joseph White of New York, but
based on Webster's track record, they required him to sign
affidavits to try to prevent that same thing from playing
out again. This seems to have led to some back
and forth during which the publisher kept pushing Goodrich to
get Webster to sign on to increasingly restrictive terms. During
(10:33):
all of that back and forth, Goodrich also convinced Webster
to sign over not only the rights to the abradement,
but also ownership of the plates that had been used
to print them. Webster did this, also signing a statement
that he had done so spontaneously and quote without the
solicitation or previous knowledge of any person. Whatever this was
(10:56):
really untrue, it added to the perception amongst a Webster's
family that Goodrich was taking advantage of him. It's kind
of hard to interpret it in any other way. Yeah,
about a year after this, Wooster was publicly accused of
plagiarizing from Noah Webster Junior. And we'll get to that
(11:16):
after a sponsor break.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
As we already talked about, Noah Webster Junior was not
happy at all when he saw how Joseph Emerson Wooster
had abridged his dictionary. And then he was also not
happy at all when he saw Worcester's comprehensive pronouncing an
Explanatory Dictionary of the English Language, which came out in
eighteen thirty. In an eighteen thirty one letter, Webster claimed that,
(11:48):
among other things, Worcester had inflated the number of words
in his own dictionary by including terms from old dictionaries
that weren't even being used in English anymore. For a
lot of people we talked about, dictionaries were really expensive.
The deciding factor in deciding which one to buy a
lot of the time was just which one had the
most words. And so he was basically saying he boosted
(12:11):
his word count to be bigger than my dictionary just
with old, obsolete words to sell more stuff.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
He puffed it up with blunderbusses. But then on November
twenty sixth, eighteen thirty four, an anonymous letter titled Webster's
Dictionary was published in the Worcester Palladium. We're just going
to call this newspaper the Palladium. It was named for
the city of Worcester, Massachusetts. It was not affiliated with
Joseph Emerson Worcester. Although this letter was published anonymously, it's
(12:41):
entirely possible that it was written by Noah Webster. He
already had an established track record of promoting himself or
criticizing others through anonymous or pseudonymous writing. This letter also
called for a stronger copyright law. That was something Webster
had vocally advocated for.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
This letter set in part quote, A gross plagiarism has
been committed by mister J. E. Worcester on the literary
property of Noah Webster, esquire. It is well known that
mister Webster has spent a life which is now somewhat advanced,
in writing a dictionary of the English Language, which he
published in eighteen twenty eight into quarto volumes. Three of
(13:23):
regiments have since been made one in octavo form, and
two still smaller for families than primary schools. This letter
went on to say that Worcester had been hired quote
to aid in the drudgery of producing these abridgments, and
then claimed that Worcester had appropriated the quote labors, acquisitions
and productions of mister Webster to his own benefit. The
(13:44):
letter claimed that Worcester's dictionary was quote a close imitation
of Webster's and expressed some regret at how many primary
schools were now using it. This basically ended with a
buyer beware that people should look into how Worcester got
this work before purchasing it. One of Worcester's friends saw
this letter and told him about it, and on December tenth,
(14:07):
The Palladium printed is his response.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
His response called these allegations grossly false. A letter war
followed in the pages of The Palladium, with the first
letter actually signed by Webster himself on January twenty fifth,
eighteen thirty five. This signed letter included a list of
one hundred and twenty one specific words that Webster claimed
(14:30):
had been taken from his dictionary. That added one hundred
words to an earlier list that had been published in
a different letter, Worcester countered by citing other earlier dictionaries
that had included all those same words, including thirty seven
that were found in his own abridgement of Samuel Johnson's Dictionary,
which had come out before Webster's. He also pointed out
(14:54):
a handful of words that Webster claimed Worcester had lifted
from his work, but which were not actual in Webster's
dictionaries at all, and he noted that compiling a dictionary
does not give a person ownership of the words in it,
that the words belong quote to all who write and
speak the language. Webster's response conveniently dropped the charge of
(15:17):
copied words, moving on instead to other alleged wrongdoing on
Wister's part, with those wrongs, including actually citing Webster's work
in places where he cited it. So first Webster had
claimed that Worster copied his dictionary without attribution, and then
(15:37):
he later complained about Webster having actually cited him specifically,
including giving attribution to him where it was due. Basically,
Worcester kept responding to Webster's allegations, but then Webster kept
moving the goalposts and trying to make sure he had
the last word. This is like every Reddit argument. It
(15:58):
really is. You didn't give me credit, Yes I did.
We'll keep my name out of your mouth like I don't.
You can't win. There's no way. When this letter war
fizzled out, it had gone on for well over a year,
Wooster found all of it enormously upsetting. He had always
been so careful and so methodical, and this kind of
attack on his character and his work was particularly hurtful.
(16:20):
He had also put extensive research into his own dictionary,
including collecting an enormous library of works on lexicography. Aside
from that, though, he just was not the kind of
man to have a big public letter war in the
pages of the newspaper, and he hated that he had
been dragged into one.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
About eight years after the end of this dispute in
the pages of the Palladium, on May twenty eight, eighteen
forty three, Noah Webster Junior died. His executors seemed to
have understood that the work he left behind was both
valuable and a liability. There were just so many different
editions of his dictionaries and his other published work, just
(17:02):
also so many inconsistencies among them and within them. Webster
had named five executors, with his son in law William
Ellsworth chief among them. Elswhere seems to have had a
vision for his father in law's legacy, basically to make
Webster's synonymous with quality and consistency, to turn the dictionaries
(17:23):
into a standard, uniform resource all across the country. To
do this, he had to deal not only with Webster's
erratic track record, but also with a lot of divisions
within the family. Webster's son in law, Chauncey Goodrich, had
played a huge part in the publishing of some of
his dictionaries, including connecting him to publisher Sherman Converse in
(17:44):
the first place, but Webster had fallen out with Goodrich
and Converse over their handling of Worcester's abridgment of his work.
Goodrich was not named as one of Webster's five executors,
which definitely seemed deliberate. Also, Webster had reduced Julia Goodrich's
share of her inheritance based on the income to be
(18:07):
earned from Worcester's abridgment, which is something that her husband
held the rights to. There were also disagreements within the
family about Webster's philosophies on language and spelling. So to
transform Noah Webster into an icon of consistency and quality,
Ellsworth really had to get the whole family on board,
(18:29):
and he had to work really hard to do it,
getting sign off from everyone, regardless of whether they had
been named as an executor to the estate. He also
had to buy out a publisher that had bought partial
rights to Webster's original spelling book from his son William,
and he had to find someone to finish printing the
eighteen forty one American Dictionary of the English Language corrected
(18:52):
and enlarged. More than one thousand copies of this dictionary
had been printed, but they were not bound, so they
couldn't be sold. That last one was tricky, that eighteen
forty one dictionary was a two volume work that wasn't
likely to sell as well as something that was more
compact and more affordable. But also having the pages just
(19:14):
sitting there already printed and unbound and unfinished, as like
something someone could buy like that was wasteful and it
represented a lost investment of both time and money. The
first buyer that Ellsworth found for these pages didn't wind
up doing anything with them, and the pages were then
eventually sold to Charles and George Merriam, who were printers
(19:37):
and booksellers based in Springfield, Massachusetts. The Merriams and Ellsworth
were of like minds on Webster's dictionaries and started negotiating
with other members of the family to print a new edition,
this time with Chauncey Goodrich as editor. Based on their history,
this does not seem like a hiring choice that Webster
himself would have approved of, or the members of his
(20:01):
family who thought Goodrich had taken advantage of him. It
just seems like a weird move. I mean, it's a
weird move in terms of people's feelings, but in terms
of putting out an accurate.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Goodrich was totally aware of how
contentious him being the editor was likely to be, so
he insisted that there had to be immaculately clear communication
about everything from all parties involved. He wanted not only
to get the approval of everyone in the family, but
(20:33):
also to make sure that that approval was based on
a clear understanding that he was going to be editing
this dictionary as he thought fit, which meant in a
much more mainstream conservative way than Webster probably would have wanted.
Good Rich did do this editing work, and in terms
of Webster's proposed spelling reforms, Goodrich really wanted to keep
(20:56):
only the ones that had become fairly widely an adopted
among American English speakers, like dropping the U from words
like color or labor, or changing theater from tch e
a tr to tch e a t e r, like
(21:16):
a lot of those things that today are just we
recognized they're spelled differently between American English and British English,
like a lot of these were the things that Goodrich
really kept in terms of the spelling reforms, so there
was no more women spelled wimmi n or as another example,
thumb without the silent B on the end. Goodrich also
(21:39):
wanted to get rid of any unsubstantiated etymologies and clean
up all the contradictions among the spellings and definitions. Basically,
there was so much that he wanted to change and
fix that he had to be kind of careful in
how he talked to the Miriams about it. He was
afraid that if he was super honest, he would make
them think that Noah Webster had not really known what
(22:02):
he was doing, and that putting out another dictionary under
his name would be a bad investment. Although most of
Webster's family eventually came around to the view that his
work really should be edited and standardized, another son in law,
William Fowler, did not. While the Merriams and Goodrich were
at work on a new edition of the Dictionary, Fowler
(22:23):
went to another publisher to work on a different abridgement,
one that left all of Webster's inconsistencies and eccentricities intact.
This led to the Merriams and various Webster sons in
law to hold a big meeting to do damage control,
both to make sure Fowler's edition of the Dictionary was
consistent with what they were doing and to remove him
(22:46):
from any editorial decision making. All of this strife and
family infighting eventually became so stressful that Goodrich thought pretty
seriously about quitting. If you're like what happened to Joseph Wooston, well,
he was working on a new edition of his dictionary,
and everybody involved with this new edition of Webster's Dictionary
(23:10):
knew about that and saw it as a threat. Wooster
did not need to clean up and standardize his work
before publishing it. It was already cleaned up and pretty standardized,
he already had a reputation as an exceptional researcher and lexicographer. Also, overall,
just sort of generally, Wooster's dictionaries had been better reviewed
(23:32):
and had sold better and been more profitable than Webster's
A lot of times this was just about the fact
that it was more concise, It was a more economical,
affordable book. So the Webster's team was working on a
new dictionary, knowing that it was very likely to have
a serious competitor, but without actually knowing when that competing
(23:54):
work was going to hit the market, what its format
would be, its intended audience, based anything else. Wooster's Universal
and Critical Dictionary of the English Language was finally published
in eighteen forty six, running almost nine hundred fifty pages long,
including about seventy five pages of introductory material. It was
(24:16):
based on Samuel Johnson's Dictionary, as edited by the Reverend H. J. Todd,
the same dictionary that Wooster had abridged earlier in his career,
with tens of thousands of additional words not found in
that dictionary. Wooster's eighteen forty six edition contained about eighty
three thousand words, which was more than any existing dictionary
(24:38):
in its preface, Wooster described this as an attempt to
make a complete vocabulary of the English language. He also
kind of obliquely referenced that earlier plagiarism claim leveled at
him by Noah Webster and that introductory material. He said,
quote with respect to Webster's dictionary, which the compiler several
(24:59):
years since abridged, he is not aware of having taken
a single word or the definition of a word from
that work in the preparation of this, but in relation
to words of various or disputed pronunciation. Webster's authority is
often cited in connection with that of English orthowapists, so
(25:23):
an orthowapist is someone who studies pronunciation. He also praised
Webster as the greatest and most important English lexicographer since
Samuel Johnson. The Merriams were not assuaged by any of this.
They started looking for any evidence they could find that
Worcester was lying when he said he had not taken
(25:44):
a word or definition from Webster's work. They tasked Webster's son, William,
with going through Worcester's new Dictionary to find examples of copying.
William did this but did not find anything. They also
called on experts to write review who's criticizing Worcester's work,
and one of those was Noah Porter of Yale, who,
(26:05):
among other things, suggested that Wooster had included absurd words,
some of them only ever used in writing once, just
to inflate the total. We should note here that the
Miriams were still making use of work that Worcester had
done for Webster while abridging Webster's earlier dictionary, So they
(26:27):
were really trying to frame Worcester as a plagiarist without
really acknowledging their ongoing use of his work that he
had done earlier for Webster and Chancey Goodrich and converse
in that abridgement. Let's try to discredit the guy that
(26:47):
fixed all the problems with this book we're trying to make.
The logic is sloppy. As we mentioned in Part one,
as Wooster's eighteen forty six Dictionary was being printed, he
was undergoing a series of eye surgeries, and afterward he
had partial sight in one eye and was blind in
the other. He was not reading anything during his recovery,
(27:08):
and it seems as though if any of his friends
or family members knew about Porter's criticisms or any of
the other controversy that followed it in the papers. They
did not tell him about it. Bless them honestly.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Yes, you don't need somebody telling you what they wrote
about you in the paper while you're recovering from multiple
eye surgeries.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
In my opinion, let the man rest anyway. In eighteen
forty seven, the Miriams published The American Dictionary of the
English Language by Noah Webster, revised and enlarged by Chauncey A. Goodrich.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
In terms of pages, this was much longer than Worcester's Dictionary,
more than twelve hundred pages, printed as a quarto. Worcester's
dictionary had been printed as an octavos. In addition to
having a larger page count, the pages of Webster's dictionary
themselves were a lot bigger. Basically, this looked like a
(28:02):
way heftier book. While this new dictionary still included some
of Webster's more unusual spellings, they were now accompanied by
more standardized ones, so this was no longer a dictionary
intended to establish a new American English language with new
modes of spelling, breaking away from the rules of British English.
It was a reference people could use to learn and
(28:24):
understand American English as it was spoken. Goodrich also included
Walker's Key, a piece that Webster himself had vocally objected to,
as well as work Worcester had produced for their earlier abridgement.
The Merriams also tried to clean up the image of
Webster himself, including through biographical pieces in newspapers and magazines
(28:46):
that were meant to bolster his image as both a
lexicographer and as a person. In eighteen forty nine, Worcester
finally became aware of Porter's critique of his work that
had come out while he was recovering from surgery, as
well as the controversy that had unfolded in the press.
He expressed some shock that a Yale professor would, by
(29:07):
all appearances, basically put out a hit piece on him
at the direction of a publisher. He also defended himself
against the various allegations that had been levied against him
while he was recovering, and Charles Meriam countered that it
had actually been Worcester's own publishers who had started it.
This all took a weird turn a few years later,
(29:29):
and we're going to start talking about that. After we
paused for a sponsor break. In early August of eighteen
fifty three, Joseph Worster saw an ad for a dictionary
that had been published in London in eighteen fifty one.
(29:51):
This dictionary carried both his name and Webster's name on
the title page, but it did not seem to be
the ridgment that he had created for Webster back in
eighteen twenty nine that would have made sense to have
both of their names on it. It was his own
eighteen forty six dictionary, but with Webster's name added to it.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Wooster wrote to John H. Wilkins at his publisher, Wilkins,
Carter and Company, asking what was going on. Wilkins said
that a colleague, James Brown of Little Brown and Company,
had gone to Europe, and that Wilkins Cartering Company had
given him permission to find a British publisher for Wooster's work.
When a publisher was found, Wilkins had shipped him the plates.
(30:38):
The British publisher, Henry G. Bond, had not printed this
book right away as agreed, and when Wooster's publisher got
in touch with him to ask him why, he kind
of implied that he might back out of the deal.
Sky seems to have been kind of shady. When Bond
did finally print this dictionary, he removed U. Worcester's assertion
(31:02):
of having not taken a single word or the definition
of a word from Webster, and then added Webster's name
to the title page. Wooster's US publisher was understandably baffled
and wrote to Bond demanding an explanation. Bond later made
a statement that he had genuinely thought that what he
(31:22):
had was Wooster's abridgment of Webster's dictionary, and when he
realized it wasn't, it would have been too difficult and
expensive for him to fix the mistake, so he just
went ahead with it. Listen, this doesn't really make sense,
but that was his claim. Yet he had to make
changes to the thing to make it different from the
(31:42):
work he had received. I honestly don't know what was
going on. And then I was just in too deep. Yeah, it's.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
I don't know if he thought that by adding Webster's
name it would sell better or exactly what.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
It doesn't make sense. Uh so this would have been
bad enough.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
Right like this, I had printed something that was Worcester's work,
but he had put Webster's name on it, but then
the Miriams picked this up and then tried to use
it as evidence that Worcester was somehow unscrupulous, even though
this whole thing was entirely beyond his control. The Miriams
also printed a pamphlet in May of eighteen fifty three
titled The English Dictionaries of Webster and Worcester, full of
(32:21):
testimonials that praised Webster as well as criticisms of Worcester,
and claims that Webster's work included errors that Webster had
made in earlier dictionaries but corrected in later ones, to
sort of implying that he had been copying not just
from Webster but from like old, inaccurate Webster. Five months later,
(32:42):
Worcester countered with a pamphlet of his own titled A
Gross Literary Fraud Exposed, relating to the publication of Worcester's
Dictionary in London, which walked through how a British publisher
had added Webster's name to his own work without Worcester's knowledge.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Wooster also tried to get some backup from people who
knew the whole story of his abridgment of Webster's dictionary
and could speak to his work and his character. He
tracked down Sherman Converse, publisher of the earlier abridgment, and
Converse defended him. Wooster printed Converse's defense in a later
edition of his pamphlet, and this led to a prolonged
(33:21):
dispute between Converse and the Merriams that went on for months.
William Draper Swan of Worcester's new publisher, Jenks Hickling and
Swann also published a forty five page pamphlet titled a
Reply to Mister G.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
And C.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
Merriam's Attack on the character of Doctor Wooster and his
Dictionaries that came out in eighteen fifty four.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Worcester also tried to get the support of Chauncey Goodrich,
who he'd had a good working relationship with during that abridgment,
but Goodrich's support at this point was kind of half
hearted at best. He kept doing kind of a both
sides maneuver, qualified buying any defense of Worcester with his
own defense of the Miriams, so saying things like he
(34:04):
didn't think they intended to malign Worcester's character. It really
seems like Goodrich felt like he was caught in the
middle of a dispute that he did not want any
part of. He was in his sixties. He really wanted
to be resting and looking after his own health and
not in this mess.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
I'm just picturing him going, why did I ever take
that job? At this point, that back and forth in
the Worcester Palladium repeated itself on a grander scale, with
Worcester and the Merriams each publishing pamphlets, including in March
of eighteen fifty four a gross literary fraud exposed relating
to the publication of Worcester's Dictionary in London as Webster's Dictionary.
(34:47):
That was not a do over of Worcester's pamphlet. It
was by the Merriams using a nearly identical title to
the one that Worcester had used. It seems like at.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
Some point something passed between Goodrich and Worcester that led
to Worcester dropping this whole subject. Goodrich made a reference
in another letter that he hoped what he had just
said to Wister would have an impact, and then afterwards
Wooster did not respond to the Miriams again. He said
that this had been in a letter. Nobody has actually
(35:19):
found Goodrich's letter. We don't really know what it might
have said. Whatever it was, though, it seems to have
destroyed these two men's previously friendly relationship. There's no other
surviving correspondence between them after this point. Kind of mysterious,
but Worcester seems to have given up. Meanwhile, the Merriams
(35:40):
and Jenks, Hickling and Swann were each promoting Webster's and
Worcester's dictionaries respectively. This included the Miriams using a quote
from past podcast subject Washington Irving in their advertising. They
had sent him a copy of Webster's eighteen forty seven dictionary,
and he had thanked them for it, saying it was useful,
but noting that he wasn't making it his standard for spelling.
(36:03):
But the Merriams framed this in their advertisements almost as
an endorsement. He wasn't happy about that. Who would be
the rivalry between Webster and Worcester, which, again, rivalry not
the greatest word. This was mostly instigated and perpetuated by
the Merriams. This continued as Worcester put out another dictionary
(36:26):
in eighteen fifty five, and then the Merriams hired Webster's
old critic, Lyman Cobb as an editor for a new
Webster Dictionary. Then, when the Miriams heard that Wooster was
planning an illustrated dictionary, they scurried to commission a bunch
of woodcuts for their next edition of Webster's Dictionary. The
(36:47):
pages of that dictionary had already been set, though, so
these woodcuts were printed in a special section at the beginning.
So instead of say, having say like apple with a
little woodcut picture of an apple next to it, the
apple picture would be in a separate section at the
beginning of the book. These woodcuts were also criticized as
not being particularly good in their quality, which is not
(37:09):
really surprising if they were a rush job. However, the
Miriams did beat Wooster to market with this dictionary plus
woodcuts section that came out in eighteen fifty nine, and
Wooster's two volume Illustrated Dictionary of the English Language came
out the following year. This last dictionary of Wooster's was
(37:30):
very well received, with some reviewers declaring him the clear
winner in the rivalry between Webster and Worcester. For Worcester's part,
he avoided getting involved in any of the press about it.
He was upset that this so called rivalry had ever
even happened, and the start of the US Civil War
in eighteen sixty one made all of it just seem
even more frivolous. Joseph Emerson Worcester died on October twenty seventh,
(37:55):
eighteen sixty five. William Draper Swan had died about a
year before, and that left Wister without one of his
biggest defenders, both in public and as a publisher. Publisher J. P.
Lippencott bought the rights to Worster's dictionaries, and they've remained
in print for decades afterward, But soon it became obvious
(38:15):
that Webster had really become the bigger brand. This was
especially true after the publication of Webster's An American Dictionary
of the English Language in eighteen sixty four. Just to
be clear, Miriam Webster is still my go to source
for spellings and definitions and pronunciations of American English today,
(38:36):
including looking up how to say or Theowhapist for this episode,
which according to Webster can also be or Theopist. But man,
is it weird how we got here?
Speaker 1 (38:47):
Yeah? It's really a big uh. There's a lot of
pr involved, But I too use I call it m
dub because that's how we roll at our house. We're
so familiar with the Merriam Websters. I mean that's my
go to as well, but woof's by the backstory.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
Yeah, And it's a lot of other style guides like
the Associated Press Style Guide, Theicago Manual Style Modern Language
Association either like prefer a Webster's Dictionary as their preferred
dictionary or include a Webster's Dictionary among their preferred dictionaries,
like it, like it really has become a standard resource.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
So it's just it's even knowing.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
What the publishing industry could be like, both in the
US and the UK in the nineteenth century. Knowing this
part of it still just makes it very weird to
me that we did get to this place where a
Miriam Webster Dictionary is like the preferred dictionary in a
lot of different context but sort of started out as
something that was full of weird spellings and contradictions with
(39:54):
the dictionary itself.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
Well, it also makes it seem like dictionaries are such
a hot commodity that you to be the first of market,
and I'm like, were they ever really that big of
an industry? Yeah, I think there's.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
Some validity to the fact that they tended to be
so expensive that an individual household was probably going to
buy only at most one, So being first to market
was really important. Just being first to market with a
dictionary that has hastily created woodcuts in a separate section
(40:28):
at the front cracks me up, right. But then, like
that presumes that they didn't already have their one Do
you know what I mean? Like, hmm, that that whole
thing is kind of predicated on the idea that there's
always like a new searge of people looking for their
one and only diction, their one dictionary.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
Yeah. Yeah, uh So, anyway, do you also have listener mail?
Do have listener mail? This listener mail is from Echo
and Echo said thank you for doing the episode about
sudan Naga. Dear Holly and Tracy, Greetings from Tokyo, Japan.
I just wanted to drop a quick thank you note
for doing the Sudanaga episode. I remember that sudan Naga
(41:10):
was one of many stories at my high school history class,
and he is still somewhat popular historical figure in Japan.
I also wanted to tell you that it is easy
to understand that it was not easy to find detailed
information about sudan Naga and his family because back then
what he did was considered was a big shame, and people,
especially the relatives and people who would know sudan Naga
(41:32):
and his family just ignored the existence of Sudannaga and
the family so they would not be caught by officials
and jailed in the worst case is death penalty. So
Echo offers assistance for future Japanese episodes and says thank
you again for your excellent work. You are my Tokyo
(41:53):
morning commute partners. Your show brightens up my dull and
boring time on my subway ride. PS.
Speaker 2 (41:59):
I wanted to say I'm a cute dog or cat pictures,
but I have an allergy for that. I Mcjamany's pickles
using Rice brand and they are lactic acid and too
small to.
Speaker 1 (42:12):
Take a photo.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
And I'm like, I'm very intrigued by that idea anyway,
even even if it's too small.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
So thank you so much. Echo.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
It is always nice to hear from folks who are
living in a place that we talk about on the show.
In that place, because we talk about the United States
a lot, because that's where we are and that's where
most of our listeners are, and so it's always great
when we have something that is from other parts of
the world hearing from people in those places also, So
thank you so much if you would like to write
(42:44):
to us about this or any other podcast or a
history podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. We're also all over
social media at Mister in History. That's where you'll find
our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. And you can subscribe
to our show on the iHeartRadio app. And we're for
else you'd like to get your podcasts. Stuff you Missed
(43:07):
in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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