October 16th is celebrated in many schools as Dictionary Day in honor of Noah Webster, born October 16, 1758. Noah Webster is often called "the father of the American dictionary."
At the age of 70, after taking more than 27 years to write it, he published his masterpiece, the
American Dictionary of the English Language. He introduced many words that possess unique American spelling which are still used today, including words such as "music" and "color" derived from the English spellings "musick" and "colour". He was forced to take a second mortgage on his house to publish the second edition of the dictionary released in 1840.
A lifelong passion was to ensure the literacy of Americans and he published the first Speller for children in 1783. The Speller was far more popular during his lifetime than his dictionary and sold millions of copies and became an invaluable teaching tool due to his unique understanding of how children learned language at different stages.
You can learn more about Noah Webster's life
here.
Happy Dictionary Day!
We owe him a lot, to be sure.
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