LEGISLATIVE RESOLUTION memorializing Governor Andrew M. Cuomo to
proclaim October 16, 2014, as Dictionary Day in the State of New York

WHEREAS, It is the sense of this Legislative Body to memorialize Gover-
nor Andrew M. Cuomo to proclaim October 16, 2014, as Dictionary Day in
the State of New York; and
WHEREAS, Dictionary Day is the official holiday in which all New York-
ers celebrate the birth of Noah Webster, who, on this day would be 254
years old; it is also a day to celebrate dictionaries in general; and
WHEREAS, Without Noah Webster, the father of the American Dictionary,
our word knowledge would be something quite different; Peter Sokolowski,
Merriam-Webster editor at large, passed along two quotes by Webster he
considers "appropriate and inspirational in that they continue to be
true for us today" "the business of the lexicographer is to collect,
arrange, and define, as far as possible, all the words that belong to a
language, and leave the author to select from them at his pleasure and
according to his judgment" and "Analogy, custom, and habit form a better
rule to guide men in the use of words than any tribunal of men."; and
WHEREAS, Webster's was not the first dictionary, those date back to
Sumerian times, but was the first Americanized version, coming after the
first purely English dictionary, Robert Cawdrey's A Table Alphabetical
(1604), which included approximately 3,000 words; and
WHEREAS, In 1746 to 1747, per M-W.com, Samuel Johnson undertook the
most ambitious English dictionary to that time, a list of 43,500 words;
Webster's early 49th-Century dictionary featuring 70,000 words sprang
from that, and was followed by the Oxford English Dictionary; diction-
aries would never be the same; and
WHEREAS, Noah Webster's mother's name was Mercy and his father founded
a local book society, a pre-library; he hailed from an established
Yankee family; and
WHEREAS, Noah Webster went to Yale at the age of 15, and graduated in
1778; with no solid career plans afterward, he did what all unemployed
post grads do, he wrote that a liberal education disqualifies a man for
business, but things turned out okay; he went on to work as a teacher,
studied law, got his masters, opened a school and then closed it, became
a journalist and political theorist, founded another private school for
the wealthy, and, by 1785, he had written his speller, a grammar book
and a reader for elementary schools, the sales of which would allow him
to work on his dictionary; this book was widely known as the Blue-Backed
Speller, for its blue cover; and
WHEREAS, Noah Webster lived during the American Revolution and sought
American independence, in part by Americanizing and standardizing the
spellings of various words, defying Anglocreep, choosing s over c in
words like defense, switching the re to er in words such as center and
theater, changing musick to music, dropping the double l in traveler and
the u in words like colour or favour;
WHEREAS, Noah Webster also wanted to change tongue to tung and women
to wimmen, but that did not happen; he was the first to document
distinctively American vocabulary such as skunk, hickory, and chowder;
and
WHEREAS, From 1789, an essay includes some of his wild ideas on
reforming spelling, including the omission of all superfluous or silent
letters such as 'a' in bread; thus bread, head, give, breast, built,
meant, realm, friend, would be spelt, bred, hed, giv, brest, bilt, ment,
relm, frend; would this alteration produce any inconvenience, any embar-
rassment or expense; by no means but on the other hand, it would lessen
the trouble of writing, and much more, of learning the language; it

would reduce the true pronunciation to a certainty; and while it would
assist foreigners and our own children in acquiring the language, it
would render the pronunciation uniform, in different parts of the coun-
try, and almost prevent the possibility of changes; and
WHEREAS, Noah Webster borrowed $1,500 from Alexander Hamilton in 1793
to fund a move to New York, where he would edit the Federalist Party
newspaper; he also founded New York's first daily newspaper, AMERICAN
MINERVA, which later became the COMMERCIAL ADVERTISER; and
WHEREAS, He was called a number of fantastic dictionary-ready names by
the Jeffersonian Republicans, including: a pusillanimous, half-begotten,
self-dubbed patriot; an incurable lunatic; a deceitful newsmonger Peda-
gogue and Quack; a traitor to the cause of Federalism; a toad in the
service of sans-cullottism; a prostitute wretch; a great fool; a bare-
faced liar; a spiteful viper; and a maniacal pedant; and
WHEREAS, Noah Webster, who helped to found Amherst College, was
certainly prolific; a modern bibliography of his published works
required 655 pages; and
WHEREAS, His first dictionary, published in 1806, was called A COMPEN-
DIOUS DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE; after that came AN AMERICAN
DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, which took 18 years to finish and
contained 70,000 words, of which 12 thousand had never appeared in a
published dictionary before; and
WHEREAS, To complete the work, Noah Webster learned 26 languages,
including Old English, German, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, French,
Hebrew, Arabic, and Sanskrit; Noah Webster was 70 years old when he
published it in 1828; it only sold 2,500 copies, and unfortunately he
was in debt the rest of his life; and
WHEREAS, But, in 1831, George and Charles Merriam, who opened a print-
ing and bookselling business in Springfield, Massachusetts, bought
unsold copies of Noah Webster's second edition of AN AMERICAN DICTIONARY
OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, CORRECTED AND ENLARGED (1841) from his heirs
after he died in 1843; the rest, as they say, is dictionary history;
now, therefore, be it
RESOLVED, That this Legislative Body pause in its deliberations to
memorialize Governor Andrew M. Cuomo to proclaim October 16, 2014, as
Dictionary Day in the State of New York; and be it further
RESOLVED, That a copy of this Resolution, suitably engrossed, be tran-
smitted to The Honorable Andrew M. Cuomo, Governor of the State of New
York.