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99-400: Noah Webster (October 16, 1758 – May 28, 1843) was an American lexicographer , textbook pioneer, English-language spelling reformer , political writer , editor, and author. He has been called the "Father of American Scholarship and Education". His "Blue-Backed Speller" books taught generations of American children how to spell and read. Webster's name has become synonymous with "dictionary" in

198-622: A Federalist Party newspaper. He became a prolific author, publishing newspaper articles, political essays, and textbooks. He returned to Connecticut in 1798 and served in the Connecticut House of Representatives . Webster founded the Connecticut Society for the Abolition of Slavery in 1791 but later became somewhat disillusioned with the abolitionist movement. In 1806, Webster published his first dictionary, A Compendious Dictionary of

297-509: A liberal arts education "disqualifies a man for business". He taught school briefly in Glastonbury, but the working conditions were harsh and the pay low. He resigned to study law. While studying law under future U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth , Webster also taught full-time in Hartford—a grueling experience that ultimately proved unsustainable. He quit his legal studies for

396-459: A "harmless drudge". Generally, lexicography focuses on the design, compilation, use and evaluation of general dictionaries, i.e. dictionaries that provide a description of the language in general use. Such a dictionary is usually called a general dictionary or LGP dictionary (Language for General Purpose). Specialized lexicography focuses on the design, compilation, use and evaluation of specialized dictionaries, i.e. dictionaries that are devoted to

495-406: A (relatively restricted) set of linguistic and factual elements of one or more specialist subject fields, e.g. legal lexicography . Such a dictionary is usually called a specialized dictionary or Language for specific purposes dictionary and following Nielsen 1994, specialized dictionaries are either multi-field, single-field or sub-field dictionaries. It is now widely accepted that lexicography

594-595: A cappella in the United States. The earliest choral group, the Beethoven Society, dates to 1812 and emerged in the mid-nineteenth century as the Yale Glee Club . Although glee clubs around the country had spawned small collegiate ensembles since that time, the all-senior, all-male Whiffenpoofs , formed in 1909, are often considered to be the oldest collegiate a cappella society in the United States. Formalizing

693-411: A complex problem into its component parts and had each pupil master one part before moving to the next. Ellis argues that Webster anticipated some of the insights currently associated with Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development . Webster said that children pass through distinctive learning phases in which they master increasingly complex or abstract tasks. Therefore, teachers must not try to teach

792-432: A dictionary), 'dictionary use' (or observing the reference acts and skills of dictionary users), and 'dictionary IT' (or applying computer aids to the process of dictionary compilation). One important consideration is the status of 'bilingual lexicography', or the compilation and use of the bilingual dictionary in all its aspects (see e.g. Nielsen 1994). In spite of a relatively long history of this type of dictionary, it

891-649: A dictionary. They are responsible for arranging lexical material (usually alphabetically ) to facilitate understanding and navigation. Coined in English 1680, the word "lexicography" derives from the Greek λεξικογράφος ( lexikographos ), "lexicographer", from λεξικόν ( lexicon ), neut. of λεξικός lexikos , "of or for words", from λέξις ( lexis ), "speech", "word" (in turn from λέγω ( lego ), "to say", "to speak" ) and γράφω ( grapho ), "to scratch, to inscribe, to write". Practical lexicographic work involves several activities, and

990-493: A dining hall, library, and student facilities ranging from printing presses to darkrooms. Each is led by a Head of College, a faculty member who serves as its chief administrator, and a Dean, who oversees student academic affairs. University faculty and distinguished affiliates are associated with the colleges as fellows. Unlike their English forerunners, the colleges do not administer academic degree programs or courses of study, but they do sponsor academic seminars that fall outside

1089-537: A few days after he had completed making more specific definitions to the second edition, and with much of his efforts with the dictionary still unrecognized, Noah Webster died. His last words were, "I am entirely submissive to the will of God." He died later that evening. The rights to his dictionary were acquired by Charles and George Merriam in 1843 from Webster's estate and all contemporary Merriam-Webster dictionaries trace their lineage to that of Webster, although many others have adopted his name, attempting to share in

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1188-438: A grammar book and a reader for elementary schools. Proceeds from continuing sales of the popular blue-backed speller enabled Webster to spend many years working on his famous dictionary. Webster was by nature a revolutionary, seeking American independence from the cultural thralldom to Europe. He aimed to create a utopian America, free from luxury and ostentation, and a champion of freedom. By 1781, Webster had an expansive view of

1287-660: A key element of Federalism. He was also one of the few early American thinkers who applied the theories of the French theorist Jean-Jacques Rousseau in America. He relied heavily on Rousseau's Social Contract while writing Sketches of American Policy , one of the earliest, widely-published arguments for a strong central government in America. He also wrote two "fan-fiction" sequels to Rousseau's Emile, or On Education (1762) and included them in his Reader for schoolchildren. Webster's Reader also contains an idealized word-portrait of Sophie,

1386-464: A local book society, a precursor to the public library. After American independence, he was appointed a justice of the peace. Webster's father never attended college, but he was intellectually curious and prized education. Webster's mother spent long hours teaching her children spelling, mathematics, and music. At age six, Webster began attending a dilapidated one-room primary school built by West Hartford's Ecclesiastical Society. Years later, he described

1485-590: A portrait of Rousseau's character, Sophie, and a tribute to Juliana Smith who had recently rejected Webster's romantic advances. Webster also included excerpts from Tom Paine 's The Crisis and an essay by Thomas Day calling for the abolition of slavery in accord with the Declaration of Independence. Webster's Speller was relatively secular. It ended with two pages of important dates in American history, beginning with Columbus's discovery of America in 1492 and ending with

1584-616: A private school and writing a series of educational books, including the "Blue-Backed Speller". A strong supporter of the American Revolution and the ratification of the United States Constitution , Webster later criticized American society as being in need of an intellectual foundation. He believed American nationalism had distinctive qualities that differed from European values. In 1793, Alexander Hamilton recruited Webster to move to New York City and become an editor for

1683-476: A student of Yale President Timothy Dwight in 1809, and black abolitionist James W. C. Pennington , who was allowed to audit theology courses in 1837. Moses Simons , a descendant of a slave-holding South Carolinian family, has been suggested to be the first Jew to graduate from Yale. Though his maternal ancestry is disputed, he may have also been the first person of African-American descent to graduate from any American college. In 1854, Yung Wing graduated from

1782-529: A style pioneered by black barbershop groups in New Haven, their repertoire was amplified by the founding of similar groups across the country. Coeducation in 1969 made possible all-women's groups and mixed groups. In all, there are now at least eighteen undergraduate a cappella groups in Yale College, ranging from a Slavic chorus to Christian a cappella. Student publications at Yale date back as far as 1806, but

1881-524: A three-year-old how to read; they could not do it until age five. He organized his speller accordingly, beginning with the alphabet and moving systematically through the different sounds of vowels and consonants, then syllables, then simple words, then more complex words, then sentences. The speller was originally titled The First Part of the Grammatical Institute of the English Language . Over

1980-423: A week. Some of the oldest society buildings are enclosed and windowless; members refer to them as "tombs." Their activities have varied over time and across societies, but most societies meet for dinners, discussion, drinking, and long-form disclosure of members' life history. Despite a long history of social exclusion—of Jews and women in particular—many of these societies have prioritized membership diversity in

2079-532: A year and lapsed into a depression ; he then found another practicing attorney to tutor him, and completed his studies and passed the bar examination in 1781. With the American Revolutionary War still ongoing, Webster was unable to find work as a lawyer. He received a master’s degree from Yale by delivering an oral dissertation to the graduating class. Later that year, he opened a small private school in western Connecticut, which initially succeeded but

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2178-766: Is a scholarly discipline in its own right and not a sub-branch of applied linguistics , as the chief object of study in lexicography is the dictionary (see e.g. Bergenholtz/Nielsen/Tarp 2009). Lexicography is the practice of creating books, computer programs, or databases that reflect lexicographical work and are intended for public use. These include dictionaries and thesauri which are widely accessible resources that present various aspects of lexicology, such as spelling, pronunciation, and meaning. Lexicographers are tasked with defining simple words as well as figuring out how compound or complex words or words with many meanings can be clearly explained. They also make decisions regarding which words should be kept, added, or removed from

2277-657: Is often said to be less developed in a number of respects than its unilingual counterpart, especially in cases where one of the languages involved is not a major language. Not all genres of reference works are available in interlingual versions, e.g. LSP , learners' and encyclopedic types, although sometimes these challenges produce new subtypes, e.g. 'semi-bilingual' or 'bilingualised' dictionaries such as Hornby's (Oxford) Advanced Learner's Dictionary English-Chinese , which have been developed by translating existing monolingual dictionaries (see Marello 1998). Traces of lexicography can be identified as early late 4th millennium BCE, with

2376-509: Is the undergraduate college of Yale University . Founded in 1701, it is the original school of the university. Although other Yale schools were founded as early as 1810, all of Yale was officially known as Yale College until 1887, when its schools were confederated and the institution was renamed Yale University. It is ranked as one of the top colleges in the United States. Originally established to train Congregationalist ministers,

2475-784: The Colony of Connecticut . Originally situated in Abraham Pierson's home in Killingworth, Connecticut , the college moved to Old Saybrook, Connecticut in 1703, when Nathaniel Lynde, the first treasurer of Yale, donated land and a building. The college moved again to New Haven in 1718, and was renamed for Elihu Yale , an early benefactor, merchant, and philanthropist. Founded as a school to train ministers, original curriculum included only coursework in theology and sacred languages . Although early faculty, including Jonathan Edwards and Elisha Williams , maintained strict Congregational orthodoxy, by

2574-484: The McGuffey Eclectic Readers of William Holmes McGuffey , which sold over 120 million copies. Vincent P. Bynack (1984) examines Webster in relation to his commitment to the idea of a unified American national culture that would stave off the decline of republican virtues and solidarity. Webster acquired his perspective on language from such theorists as Maupertuis , Michaelis , and Herder . There he found

2673-564: The battle of Yorktown in 1781. "Let sacred things be appropriated for sacred purposes," Webster wrote. As Ellis explains, "Webster began to construct a secular catechism to the nation-state. Here was the first appearance of 'civics' in American schoolbooks. In this sense, Webster's speller becoming what was to be the secular successor to The New England Primer with its explicitly biblical injunctions." Later in life, Webster became more religious and incorporated religious themes into his work. However, after 1840, Webster's books lost market share to

2772-443: The re to er in words such as center . He also changed tongue to the older spelling tung , but this did not catch on. Part three of his Grammatical Institute (1785) was a reader designed to uplift the mind and "diffuse the principles of virtue and patriotism." "In the choice of pieces", he explained, "I have not been inattentive to the political interests of America. Several of those masterly addresses of Congress, written at

2871-455: The "Lexicon" was her "only companion" for years. One biographer said, "The dictionary was no mere reference book to her; she read it as a priest his breviary—over and over, page by page, with utter absorption." Nathan Austin has explored the intersection of lexicographical and poetic practices in American literature, and attempts to map out a "lexical poetics" using Webster's definitions as his base. Poets mined his dictionaries, often drawing upon

2970-427: The "secrecy" of these senior societies is dubious; their existence is widely known and membership rolls for most are published yearly. Ten present-day societies— Skull and Bones , Scroll and Key , Book and Snake , Wolf's Head , Elihu , Berzelius , St. Elmo , Manuscript , Shabtai , and Mace and Chain —have private buildings near campus; many other societies have a fixed on-campus meeting space where they meet twice

3069-541: The 15th century, lexicography flourished. Dictionaries became increasingly widespread, and their purpose shifted from a way to store lexical knowledge to a mode of disseminating lexical information. Modern lexicographical practices began taking shape during the 18th and 19th centuries, led by notable lexicographers such as Samuel Johnson , Vladimir Dal , the Brothers Grimm , Noah Webster , James Murray , Peter Mark Roget , Joseph Emerson Worcester , and others. During

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3168-452: The 20th century, the invention of computers changed lexicography again. With access to large databases, finding lexical evidence became significantly faster and easier. Corpus research also enables lexicographers to discriminate different senses of a word based on said evidence. Additionally, lexicographers were now able to work nonlinearly, rather than being bound to a traditional lexicographical ordering like alphabetical ordering . In

3267-589: The American Revolution (2008), John Algeo notes: "It is often assumed that characteristically American spellings were invented by Noah Webster. He was very influential in popularizing certain spellings in America, but he did not originate them. Rather ... he chose already existing options such as center, color and check on such grounds as simplicity, analogy or etymology." He also added American words, like "skunk", that did not appear in British dictionaries. At

3366-596: The Bible and Excellence of the Christian Religion , an apologetic book in defense of the Bible and Christianity itself. Initially supportive of the abolitionist movement , Webster helped found the Connecticut Society for the Abolition of Slavery in 1791. However, by the 1830's he began to disagree with the movement's arguments that Americans who did not actively oppose the institution of slavery were complicit in

3465-562: The Council of the Heads of College, composed of the Heads of College of the fourteen colleges. The most distinctive feature of Yale College undergraduate life is the residential college system. The system was established in 1933, through a gift by Yale graduate Edward S. Harkness , who admired the college systems at Oxford University and Cambridge University . Each college consists of dormitory buildings surrounding an enclosed courtyard, and features

3564-408: The English Language . By 1807, he began work on a more extensive dictionary, An American Dictionary of the English Language , which took twenty-six years to complete. To evaluate the etymology of words, Webster learned twenty-eight languages, including Old English , Gothic, German, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, Dutch, Welsh, Russian, Hebrew, Aramaic, Persian, Arabic, and Sanskrit . His goal

3663-492: The English Language . The following year, he started working on an expanded and comprehensive dictionary, finally publishing it in 1828. He was influential in popularizing certain American spellings. He played a role in advocating for copyright reform, contributing to the Copyright Act of 1831 , the first major statutory revision of U.S. copyright law . While working on a second volume of his dictionary, Webster died in 1843, and

3762-411: The English language had been corrupted by the British aristocracy, which set its own standard for proper spelling and pronunciation. Webster rejected the notion that the study of Greek and Latin must precede the study of English grammar. The appropriate standard for the American language, argued Webster, was "the same republican principles as American civil and ecclesiastical constitutions." This meant that

3861-549: The United States and Britain. As a result, he was repeatedly denounced by the Jeffersonian Republicans as "a pusillanimous, half-begotten, self-dubbed patriot", "an incurable lunatic", and "a deceitful newsmonger ... Pedagogue and Quack." For decades, he was one of the most prolific authors in the new nation, publishing textbooks, political essays, a report on infectious diseases, and newspaper articles for his Federalist party. In 1799 Webster wrote two massive volumes on

3960-469: The United States, especially the modern Merriam-Webster dictionary that was first published in 1828 as An American Dictionary of the English Language . Born in West Hartford, Connecticut , Webster graduated from Yale College in 1778. He passed the bar examination after studying law under Oliver Ellsworth and others, but was unable to find work as a lawyer. He found some financial success by opening

4059-474: The West Hartford Historical Society. His father, Noah Webster Sr. (1722–1813), was a descendant of Connecticut Governor John Webster ; his mother Mercy (Steele) Webster (1727–1794) was a descendant of Governor William Bradford of Plymouth Colony . His father was primarily a farmer, though he was also deacon of the local Congregational church , captain of the town's militia, and a founder of

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4158-509: The Yale Corporation to oversee the affairs of each college. Residential college deans, who are supervised by the Dean of Yale College, are in charge of undergraduate academic oversight. Each residential college is governed by its Head of College, Dean, and Fellows, and has a college council of students with limited jurisdiction over student affairs. Issues affecting multiple colleges are governed by

4257-471: The abolitionist movement, writing that "slavery is a great sin and a general calamity—but it is not our sin, though it may prove to be a terrible calamity to us in the north. But we cannot legally interfere with the South on this subject. To come north to preach and thus disturb our peace, when we can legally do nothing to effect this object, is, in my view, highly criminal and the preachers of abolitionism deserve

4356-514: The administrations of George Washington and John Adams , especially their policy of neutrality between Britain and France, and he especially criticized the excesses of the French Revolution and its Reign of Terror . When French ambassador Citizen Genêt set up a network of pro-Jacobin " Democratic-Republican Societies " that entered American politics and attacked President Washington, he condemned them. He later defended Jay's Treaty between

4455-411: The age of seventy, Webster published his dictionary in 1828, registering the copyright on April 14. Despite its significant place in the history of American English, Webster's first dictionary sold only 2,500 copies. He was forced to mortgage his home to develop a second edition, and for the rest of his life he had debt problems. In 1840, the second edition was published in two volumes. On May 28, 1843,

4554-425: The belief that a nation's linguistic forms and the thoughts correlated with them shaped individuals' behavior. Thus, the etymological clarification and reform of American English promised to improve citizens' manners and thereby preserve republican purity and social stability. This presupposition animated Webster's Speller and Grammar . In 1806, Webster published his first dictionary , A Compendious Dictionary of

4653-635: The causes of “epidemics and pestilential diseases”. Medical historians have considered him as “America’s first epidemiologist”. He was so prolific that a modern bibliography of his works spans 655 pages. He moved back to New Haven in 1798, and was elected as a Federalist to the Connecticut House of Representatives in 1800 and 1802–1807. Webster was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1799. He moved to Amherst, Massachusetts in 1812, where he helped to found Amherst College . In 1822, his family moved back to New Haven, where Webster

4752-416: The century's end. Participation and leadership in these groups was an important social signifier and a route to induction into prestigious senior societies. Thus extracurricular participation became central to student life and social advancement, an ethos that became a template for collegiate life across the United States. By 1870, Yale was the largest undergraduate institution in the country. The growth of

4851-442: The college and became the first student from China to graduate from an American university, and in 1857, Richard Henry Green became the first African-American man to receive a degree from the college. Until the rediscovery of Green's ethnic descent in 2014, physicist Edward Bouchet , who stayed at Yale to become the first African-American PhD recipient, was believed to also be the first African-American graduate of Yale College. In

4950-503: The college began teaching humanities and natural sciences by the late 18th century. At the same time, students began organizing extracurricular organizations: first literary societies , and later publications, sports teams, and singing groups. By the middle of the 19th century, it was the largest college in the United States. In 1847, it was joined by another undergraduate school at Yale, the Sheffield Scientific School , which

5049-576: The college has focused on international recruitment, quadrupling the fraction of international students admitted between 1993 and 2013. Yale College is a constituent school of Yale University and contains a dependent system of residential colleges . Its executive officer is the Dean of Yale College, who is appointed to a five-year term by the Yale Corporation . The dean oversees undergraduate academic curriculum, extracurricular activities, and student discipline, but does not have direct control over

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5148-521: The college worked to exclude non-Christian men, especially Jews, as well as non-white men. By the mid-1960s, these processes were becoming more meritocratic, allowing for the recruitment of a racially, economically, and geographically diverse student body. This meritocratic transition encouraged the university to establish the first need-blind admissions policy in the United States. After several decades of debate about coeducation , Yale College admitted its first class of women in 1969. In recent years,

5247-561: The commencement of the late Revolution, contain such noble, just, and independent sentiments of liberty and patriotism, that I cannot help wishing to transfuse them into the breasts of the rising generation." Students received the usual quota of Plutarch , Shakespeare , Swift , and Addison, as well as such Americans as Joel Barlow 's Vision of Columbus , Timothy Dwight 's Conquest of Canaan , and John Trumbull 's poem M'Fingal . The Reader included two, original, fan-fiction sequels to Emile or On Education by Jean-Jacques Rousseau ,

5346-466: The compilation of well-crafted dictionaries requires careful consideration of all or some of the following aspects: One important goal of lexicography is to keep the lexicographic information costs incurred by dictionary users as low as possible. Nielsen (2008) suggests relevant aspects for lexicographers to consider when making dictionaries as they all affect the users' impression and actual use of specific dictionaries. Theoretical lexicography concerns

5445-470: The course of 385 editions in his lifetime, the title was changed in 1786 to The American Spelling Book , and again in 1829 to The Elementary Spelling Book . Most people called it the "Blue-Backed Speller" because of its blue cover and, for the next one hundred years, Webster's book taught children how to read, spell, and pronounce words. It was the most popular American book of its time; by 1837, it had sold 15 million copies, and some 60 million by 1890—reaching

5544-445: The dictionaries as a nationalizing device to separate America from Britain, calling his project a "federal language", with competing forces towards regularity on the one hand and innovation on the other. Austin suggests that the contradictions of Webster's lexicography were part of a larger play between liberty and order within American intellectual discourse, with some pulled toward Europe and the past, and others pulled toward America and

5643-499: The discipline begins to develop more steadily. Lengthier glosses started to emerge in the literary cultures of antiquity, including Greece, Rome , China, India, Sasanian Persia , and the Middle East. In 636, Isidore of Seville published the first formal etymological compendium. The word dictionarium was first applied to this type of text by the late 14th century. With the invention and spread of Gutenberg's printing press in

5742-538: The earliest still in print, the Yale Literary Magazine , was founded in 1836 and is believed to be the oldest surviving literary review in the United States. Undergraduate publications like the Yale Banner , a yearbook, and The Yale Record , a humor magazine, followed suit, often around the same time similar publications were established at Harvard and Princeton. The Yale Daily News , established in 1878,

5841-434: The early 20th century, the student body was predominantly "old-stock, high-status Protestants, especially Episcopalians, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians"—a group later called WASPs . By the 1970s, it was much more diverse. Enrollment at Yale only became competitive in the early 20th century, requiring the college to set up an admissions process. As late as the 1950s, tests and demographic questionnaires for admission to

5940-416: The early 21st century, the increasing ubiquity of artificial intelligence began to impact the field, which had traditionally been a time-consuming, detail-oriented task. The advent of AI has been hailed by some as the "end of lexicography". Others are skeptical that human lexicographers will be outmoded in a field studying the particularly human substance of language. Yale College Yale College

6039-480: The expansiveness of the undergraduate curriculum were waged throughout the early 19th century, with statements like the Yale Report of 1828 re-asserting Yale's conservative theological heritage and faculty. Later in the century, William Graham Sumner , the first professor of sociology in the United States, introduced studies in the social sciences. These expanding fields of study were integrated with graduate schools of

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6138-410: The first secret society at the university, Skull and Bones . Skull and Bones "tapped" select juniors for membership as seniors, a ritual later adopted by all undergraduate senior societies. Since then, senior societies have proliferated at Yale, with recent estimates of 41 existing societies and senior class membership ranging from ten to fifty percent of each class. Although once carefully guarded,

6237-572: The first known examples being Sumerian cuneiform texts uncovered in the city of Uruk . Ancient lexicography usually consisted of word lists documenting a language's lexicon . Other early word lists have been discovered in Egyptian , Akkadian , Sanskrit , and Eblaite , and take the shape of mono- and bilingual word lists. They were organized in different ways including by subject and part of speech. The first extensive glosses , or word lists with accompanying definitions, began to appear around 300 BCE, and

6336-677: The girl in Rousseau's Emile, and Webster used Rousseau's theories in Emile to argue for the civic necessity of broad-based female education. Noah Webster married Rebecca Greenleaf (1766–1847) on October 26, 1789, in New Haven, Connecticut . They had eight children: Webster joined the elite in Hartford, Connecticut , but did not have substantial financial resources. In 1793, Alexander Hamilton lent him $ 1,500 (~$ 34,171 in 2023) to move to New York City to edit

6435-578: The idea of universal toleration: She admits all religions into her bosom; She secures the sacred rights of every individual; and (astonishing absurdity to Europeans!) she sees a thousand discordant opinions live in the strictest harmony ... it will finally raise her to a pitch of greatness and lustre, before which the glory of ancient Greece and Rome shall dwindle to a point, and the splendor of modern Empires fade into obscurity. Webster dedicated his Speller and Dictionary to providing an intellectual foundation for American nationalism. From 1787 to 1789, Webster

6534-557: The leading Federalist Party newspaper. In December, he founded New York's first daily newspaper American Minerva , later renamed the Commercial Advertiser , which he edited for four years, writing the equivalent of 20 volumes of articles and editorials. He also published the semi-weekly publication The Herald, A Gazette for the country , later known as the New-York Spectator . As a Federalist spokesman, Webster defended

6633-488: The lexicography in order to express word play. Austin explicates key definitions from both the Compendious (1806) and American (1828) dictionaries, and finds a range of themes such as the politics of "American" versus "British" English and issues of national identity and independent culture. Austin argues that Webster's dictionaries helped redefine Americanism in an era of highly flexible cultural identity. Webster himself saw

6732-409: The maintenance of the American social order. As he grew older, Webster's attitudes changed from those of an optimistic revolutionary in the 1780s to those of a pessimistic critic of man and society by the 1820s. His 1828 American Dictionary contained the greatest number of Biblical definitions given in any reference volume. Webster said of education, Education is useless without the Bible. The Bible

6831-484: The majority of young students in the nation's first century. Its royalty of a half-cent per copy was enough to sustain Webster in his other endeavors. It also helped create the popular contests known as spelling bees . As time went on, Webster changed the spellings in the book to more phonetic ones. Most of them already existed as alternative spellings. He chose spellings such as defense , color , and traveler , and changed

6930-662: The new future. In 1850 Blackie and Son in Glasgow published the first general dictionary of English that relied heavily upon pictorial illustrations integrated with the text. Its The Imperial Dictionary, English, Technological, and Scientific, Adapted to the Present State of Literature, Science, and Art; On the Basis of Webster's English Dictionary used Webster's for most of their text, adding some additional technical words that went with illustrations of machinery. In his early years, Webster

7029-496: The new nation. American nationalism was superior to European nationalism due to the perceived superiority of American values. America sees the absurdities—she observes the kingdoms of Europe, disturbed by wrangling sectaries, or their commerce, population and improvements of every kind cramped and retarded, because the human mind like the body is fettered 'and bound fast by the chords of policy and superstition': She laughs at their folly and shuns their errors: She founds her empire upon

7128-514: The normal departmental structure of the university, and the Heads of College host lectures and teas for the colleges that attract high-profile visitors. Harkness' gift built and endowed eight colleges, completed from 1932 to 1934. Additional colleges were opened in 1935 ( Timothy Dwight College ), 1940 ( Silliman College ), 1962 ( Morse College and Ezra Stiles College ), and 2017 ( Pauli Murray College and Benjamin Franklin College ), bringing

7227-461: The oversight of university's departments. Two additional colleges were built by 1940, two more ( Ezra Stiles College and Morse College ) opened in 1962, and two more ( Pauli Murray College and Benjamin Franklin College ) in 2017. For most of its history, study at Yale was almost exclusively restricted to white Protestant men, often the children of alumni. Documented exceptions to this paradigm include Hawaiian native Henry ʻŌpūkahaʻia , who became

7326-516: The penitentiary." Webster advocated for the expansion of copyright protections. The Copyright Act of 1831 was the first major statutory revision of U.S. copyright law , a result of intensive lobbying by Noah Webster and his agents in Congress. Webster also played a critical role lobbying individual states throughout the country during the 1780s to pass the first American copyright laws, which were expected to have distinct nationalistic implications for

7425-510: The people-at-large must control the language; popular sovereignty in government must be accompanied by popular usage in language. The Speller was designed to be easily taught to students, progressing according to age. From his own experiences as a teacher, Webster thought that the Speller should be simple and gave an orderly presentation of words and the rules of spelling and pronunciation. He believed that students learned most readily when he broke

7524-647: The popularity. He is buried in New Haven's Grove Street Cemetery . Lepore (2008) illustrates Webster's paradoxical views on language and politics and explains why his work was initially poorly received. Culturally conservative Federalists denounced the work as radical—too inclusive in its lexicon and even bordering on vulgar. Meanwhile, Webster's old foes the Republicans attacked the man, labeling him mad for such an undertaking. Scholars have long seen Webster's 1844 dictionary to be an important resource for reading poet Emily Dickinson 's life and work; she once commented that

7623-726: The present-day number to fourteen. The first ten colleges were designed in Collegiate Gothic and Georgian Revival styles; the two colleges built in the 1960s are Modernist reinventions of the college plan. In 2007, Yale announced the construction of two additional Collegiate Gothic residential colleges near Science Hill , which opened in 2017. Residential colleges are named for important figures or places in university history or notable alumni; they are deliberately not named for benefactors. Yale College has been called "the epicenter of college singing," both for its long history of singing groups and its centrality in establishing collegiate

7722-702: The purview of academic departments , divisions of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences which offer undergraduate and graduate curricula. In addition, the faculties of three Yale professional schools , the School of Art , School of Architecture and School of Forestry & Environmental Studies , also offer undergraduate programs. Residential colleges, which are funded and controlled by the university, have separate administration and limited self-governance. The Heads of College (before 2016 called Masters ), usually tenured faculty members, are appointed to renewable, five-year terms by

7821-653: The residential colleges. The position is currently held by Pericles Lewis , professor of comparative literature . All of the college's faculty are members of the Yale Faculty of Arts and Sciences and are thereby jointly affiliated with the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences . Tenured members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences constitute the Board of Permanent Officers, who govern the school's curriculum and programs. Most undergraduate courses and majors are offered under

7920-532: The rights to the dictionary were acquired by George and Charles Merriam . Webster was born on October 16, 1758, in the Noah Webster House in western Hartford , Connecticut Colony , during the colonial-era. The area of his birth later became West Hartford, Connecticut . He was born into an established family, and the Noah Webster House continues to highlight his life and serves as the headquarters of

8019-446: The same aspects as lexicography, but aims to develop principles that can improve the quality of future dictionaries, for instance in terms of access to data and lexicographic information costs. Several perspectives or branches of such academic dictionary research have been distinguished: 'dictionary criticism' (or evaluating the quality of one or more dictionaries, e.g. by means of reviews (see Nielsen 1999), 'dictionary history' (or tracing

8118-464: The school's system of residential colleges , established in 1932, and modeled after the constituent colleges of English universities . Undergraduates live in these colleges after their freshman year, when most live on the school's Old Campus . The Collegiate School was founded in 1701 by a charter drawn by ten Congregationalist ministers led by James Pierpont and approved by the General Court of

8217-412: The student body prompted major growth in the college's physical campus, the greatest expansion of which occurred in 1933, when a gift of Edward S. Harkness created and endowed eight residential colleges . Modeled after the college system of Oxford and Cambridge Universities , the colleges were intended to be the social and residential centers of undergraduate life while leaving academic programs under

8316-479: The system. In 1832, Webster wrote and published a history textbook titled History of the United States , which omitted any reference to the role of slavery in American history and included racist characterizations of African Americans . The textbook also "spoke of whiteness as the supreme race and declared Anglo Saxons as the only true Americans." In 1837, Webster criticized his daughter Eliza for her support for

8415-504: The teachers as the "dregs of humanity" and complained that the instruction was mainly in religion. Webster's experiences there motivated him to improve the educational experience of future generations. At age fourteen, his church pastor began tutoring him in Latin and Greek to prepare him for entering Yale College . Webster enrolled at Yale just before his 16th birthday, and during his senior year studied with Ezra Stiles , Yale's president. He

8514-441: The three volume compendium A Grammatical Institute of the English Language . The work consisted of a speller (published in 1783), a grammar (published in 1784), and a reader (published in 1785). His aim was to provide a uniquely American approach to education. His most important improvement, he claimed, was to rescue "our native tongue" from "the clamour of pedantry" that surrounded English grammar and pronunciation. He complained that

8613-485: The time of the American Revolution subsequent rectors, especially Ezra Stiles , relaxed the curriculum to include humanities and limited natural science education. Scientific courses introduced by chemist Benjamin Silliman in 1801, made the college an early hub of scientific education, a curriculum which was grafted into Yale's Sheffield Scientific School in 1847. As in many of Yale's sister institutions, debates about

8712-402: The traditions of a type of dictionary or of lexicography in a particular country or language), 'dictionary typology' (or classifying the various genres of reference works, such as dictionary versus encyclopedia, monolingual versus bilingual dictionary, general versus technical or pedagogical dictionary), 'dictionary structure' (or formatting the various ways in which the information is presented in

8811-436: The university and amalgamated into a course of liberal arts education , which presaged the advent of divisional majors in the twentieth century. The relaxation of curriculum came with expansion of the extracurriculum. Student literary societies emerged as early as 1750, singing groups and student publications in the early 1800s, fraternities and secret societies in the mid-nineteenth century, and intercollegiate athletics by

8910-424: The young nation. Lexicographer There is some disagreement on the definition of lexicology , as distinct from lexicography. Some use "lexicology" as a synonym for theoretical lexicography; others use it to mean a branch of linguistics pertaining to the inventory of words in a particular language. A person devoted to lexicography is called a lexicographer and is, according to a jest of Samuel Johnson ,

9009-750: Was America's basic text book in all fields. God's Word, contained in the Bible, has furnished all necessary rules to direct our conduct. Webster released his own edition of the Bible in 1833, called the Common Version . He used the King James Version (KJV) as a base and consulted the Hebrew and Greek along with various other versions and commentaries. Webster molded the KJV to correct grammar, replaced words that were no longer used, and removed words and phrases that could be seen as offensive. In 1834, he published Value of

9108-417: Was a freethinker, but in 1808 he became a convert to Calvinistic orthodoxy, and thereafter became a devout Congregationalist who preached the need to Christianize the nation. Webster viewed language as a means to control disruptive thoughts. His American Dictionary emphasized the virtues of social control over human passions and individualism, submission to authority, and fear of God; they were necessary for

9207-472: Was a relative latecomer but became the flagship campus daily, and continues to publish during every weekday of the undergraduate academic term. These publications have been joined by many 20th-century debuts, including The Yale Herald and The New Journal . In 1832, a rift over Phi Beta Kappa inductions between the college's two debating societies, Linonia and Brothers in Unity , caused seniors to establish

9306-400: Was absorbed into the college in 1956. These merged curricula became the basis of the modern-day liberal arts curriculum, which requires students to take courses in a broad range of subjects, including foreign language, composition, sciences, and quantitative reasoning, in addition to electing a departmental major in their sophomore year. The most distinctive feature of undergraduate life is

9405-564: Was also a member of Brothers in Unity , a secret society at Yale. His four years at Yale overlapped the American Revolutionary War and, because of food shortages and the possibility of a British invasion, many classes were held in other towns. Webster served in the Connecticut Militia. His father mortgaged the farm to send Webster to Yale, but after graduating, Webster had little contact with his family. Webster lacked clear career plans after graduating from Yale in 1779, later writing that

9504-613: Was an outspoken supporter of the new Constitution. In October 1787, he wrote a pamphlet entitled "An Examination into the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution Proposed by the Late Convention Held at Philadelphia", published under the pen name "A Citizen of America". The pamphlet was influential, particularly outside New York State. In political theory, Webster emphasized widespread property ownership,

9603-576: Was awarded an honorary degree from Yale the following year. In 1827, Webster was elected to the American Philosophical Society . As a teacher, Webster grew dissatisfied with American elementary schools. They could be overcrowded, with up to seventy children of all ages crammed into one-room schoolhouses .They suffered from poorly paid staff, lacked desks, and used unsatisfactory textbooks imported from England. Webster thought that Americans should learn from American books, so he began writing

9702-535: Was eventually closed, possibly due to a failed romance. Turning to literary work as a way to overcome his losses and channel his ambitions, he began writing a series of well-received articles for a prominent New England newspaper justifying and praising the American Revolution and arguing that the separation from Britain would be a permanent state of affairs. He then founded a private school catering to wealthy parents in Goshen, New York and, by 1785, he had written his speller,

9801-592: Was to standardize American English, which varied widely across the country. They also spelled, pronounced, and used English words differently. Webster completed his dictionary during his year abroad in January 1825 in a boarding house in Cambridge , England. His book contained seventy thousand words, of which twelve thousand had never appeared in a published dictionary before. As a spelling reformer , Webster preferred spellings that matched pronunciation better. In A Companion to

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