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A Curious Cross-Reference in Webster's American Dictionary i: David Micklethwait 'n April 1859, William Webster, son of the lexicographer, was ^studying his late father's American Dictionary oftheEnglish Language , perhaps in connection with the imminent publication of the Pictorial Edition (1859), and he spotted something very odd indeed: in the entry for the word sovereign, there was a cross-reference "See SUVERAN," but there was no entry in the dictionary for the word suveran. There had been such an entry in the 1841 Royal Octavo edition of the American Dictionary, and therefore, in that edition, the crossreference (Webster 1841, 643) had made sense, but in preparing the first Merriam edition of the dictionary (1848), the editor, Chauncey Allen Goodrich, had taken suveran out. What made the crossreference particularly odd was that it had previously not been in the Goodrich-Webster (see, for instance, a Webster Unabridged printed in 1849). Surely there could be no possible reason to put in a reference to something which had been taken out of the dictionary twelve years earlier? William wrote to the Merriams to seek an explanation. I have not seen William Webster's letter, but its existence and its content are to be inferred from the Merriams' reply, a letter dated April 11th 1859. They wrote, "It is quite singular to us, also, how there came the discrepancy in regard to 'See Suveran,' which you refer to." They said that they had two sets of plates for printing the dictionary: "The 2nd set was sent to London, and a year or two since we exchanged , as ours were worn. We find, in the set that originally went to London, and which is the one we are now working here, 'See Suveran,' Dictionaries:Journal ofthe Dictionary Society ofNorth America 26 (2005) A Curious Cross Reference195 while the books printed from the first set have not this. We think, by some mistake the words were stricken out in the proof but accidentally retained in one set of the plates. We have now ordered them stricken out."1 A closer investigation of these events proves to shed a little light on the Merriams' possible involvement in the great dictionary scandal of the 1850's, the "Gross Literary Fraud" by which a Worcester dictionary was published in London with Webster's name on it. Background The so-called "War of the Dictionaries" (waged intermittently from 1834, roughly until the publication of the Mahn edition of Webster 's Dictionary in 1864) was an unpleasing commercially motivated contest, only loosely based upon the merits of Webster's and Worcester 's works, but there was one continuing thread which ran through the argument from the beginning — a disagreement over spelling. Webster's views on spelling changed greatly during his working life. In the introduction to his first book, A Grammatical Institute of the English Language, Part I (Webster 1783, 11), he wrote: "In spelling and accenting, I have generally made Dr. Johnson's dictionary my guide." He next became an advocate of more or less phonetic spelling. The preface to his Collection ofEssays and Fugitiv Writings (Webster 1790, [ix] ) begins: "The following Collection consists of Essays and Fugitiv Peeces, ritten at various times, and on different occasions, az wil appeer by their dates and subjects." By the time of his first dictionary, A Compendious Dictionary ofthe English Language (1806), he had abandoned any attempt at wholesale reform, but was still keen to omit silent letters, most strikingly the final e in such words as disciplin, doctrin, examin, granit, hypocrit, imagin, libertin , and opposit. By 1828, when the quarto American Dictionary ofthe English Language was published, Webster had modified his position yet again. The final e was restored to most of the words listed in the previous paragraph — only granit remained, given as an alternative to granite — but 'This letter is among the Webster Family Papers, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library, Group 527, Box 2, Folder 36, and is quoted here with permission. 196David Micklethwait similar modifications were manifest in such words as gazel and maiz; he also favored leaving out the silent a from words such asJether, lether, and wether, the silent b from thum, and the...

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