Editing Dictionary (section)

===American English dictionaries===
In 1806, American [[Noah Webster]] published his first dictionary, ''[[s:A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language|A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language]]''.<ref name="britannica" /> In 1807 Webster began compiling an expanded and fully comprehensive dictionary, ''An American Dictionary of the English Language;'' it took twenty-seven years to complete. To evaluate the etymology of words, Webster learned twenty-six languages, including [[Old English]] (Anglo-Saxon), German, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, Hebrew, Arabic, and [[Sanskrit]].

Webster completed his dictionary during his year abroad in 1825 in Paris, France, and at the [[University of Cambridge]]. His book contained seventy thousand words, of which twelve thousand had never appeared in a published dictionary before. As a [[spelling reform]]er, Webster believed that English spelling rules were unnecessarily complex, so his dictionary introduced spellings that became [[American English]], replacing "colour" with "color", substituting "wagon" for "waggon", and printing "center" instead of "centre". He also added American words, like "skunk" and "squash", which did not appear in British dictionaries. At the age of seventy, Webster published his dictionary in 1828; it sold 2500 copies. In 1840, the second edition was published in two volumes. Webster's dictionary was acquired by G & C Merriam Co. in 1843, after his death, and has since been published in many revised editions. [[Merriam-Webster]] was acquired by [[Encyclopedia Britannica]] in 1964.

Controversy over the lack of usage advice in the 1961 ''[[Webster's Third New International Dictionary]]'' spurred publication of the 1969 ''[[The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language]]'', the first dictionary to use [[corpus linguistics]].