Why Don’t Americans Spell the Same as the British?

More than simply defining words, dictionaries shape the public’s language and can even help formalize cultural identity. This was especially true with Noah Webster’s An American Dictionary of the English Language, published April 14, 1828, which established an American version of the English language distinct from British standards. But this massively influential tome was not the first American dictionary—its smaller predecessor, A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language (1806), holds that title.

Born in Connecticut in 1758, Noah Webster grew up during the Revolutionary era. After graduating from Yale in 1778, he couldn’t yet afford law school, so he became a teacher. He was immediately dismayed at the state of elementary education, from the overcrowded schoolhouses to the poorly written and scarce British textbooks.

Passionate about American cultural independence, Webster believed Americans should learn from American books, and this required a standardized American language with its own idioms, pronunciations and style. He devoted his life to this mission.

From 1783 to 1785, Webster published A Grammatical Institute of the English Language. This three-volume textbook for schoolchildren—better known as the "Blue-Back Speller" for the color of the first volume’s original binding—covered spelling, grammar and reading instructions.

Webster sought to reform the phonetic alphabet and encourage consistent usage by simplifying word spellings and rules, and enforcing American pronunciations. This included using “color” over the British “colour,” “music” over “musick” and “theater” over “theatre.”

Selling 100 million copies by the early 1900s, the Speller taught millions of children to read and laid the foundation for America's first dictionary.

Webster spent decades developing a vocabulary specifically for Americans, culminating in A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language—a small book with tiny print containing brief definitions for 37,000 entries.

The concise, comprehensive dictionary continued Webster’s spelling reform work, such as changing “draught” to “draft” and “gaol” to “jail” (some changes, like spelling “ache” as “ake” and “women” as “wimmen,” didn’t stick).

The Compendious Dictionary also added thousands of new words reflecting scientific advances, political developments and Native American influences that weren’t in other dictionaries, such as “electrician,” “presidential,” “Americanize,” “skunk” and “butternut.”

Webster spent the next 20 years working on the final version of his American dictionary. He traveled the world and learned 26 languages to research the origins and roots of English words. His 1828 masterpiece, An American Dictionary of the English Language, listed 70,000 words, thousands more than its closest competitor (modern English dictionaries contain about 470,000 entries).

Ultimately, Webster’s dictionaries standardized and unified America’s English—a critical part of building a new nation with a distinct cultural identity.