Symphony in Slang (MGM, 1951) - dir. Tex Avery

Wood Engraving Wednesday

ALEXANDER ANDERSON

In Britain, the great early popularizer of wood-engraved illustrations was Thomas Bewick (1753-1828). In America, it was the physician and wood engraver Alexander Anderson (1775-1870), who was among the earliest of American wood engravers. He was very long-lived and active and his engravings may be found in many American publications throughout the 19th century, especially for the American Tract Society and Noah Webster’s series of Spellers, including this 1848 edition of The Elementary Spelling Book, published in New York by G. F. Cooledge & Brother. As a physician, Anderson is distinguished as the first doctor at what would become New York City’s Bellevue Hospital in 1795. He published as a wood engraver while practicing as a doctor, but devoted himself solely to engraving after 1820.

This edition of The Elementary Spelling Book is identified as “The Last Revised Edition,” which in itself is “an improvement” of Webster’s American Spelling Book that originally began as A Grammatical Institute of the English Language in 1783, was revised as the American Spelling Book in 1787, and had its final revision in collaboration with New York educator Aaron Ely in 1829, a year after Webster published his famous An American Dictionary of the English Language. 

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Of Alexander Hamilton, I have never changed my opinion. He was a very vicious, corrupt, ambitious, and intellectually great man - an Archangel ruined.

From Josiah Meigs, Washington, August 21, 1818, to Noah Webster, Jr.

webster made several spelling proposals that did not catch on. he wrote in his own simplified system at times.

the Preface and the final few essays in this collection are in his reformed spelling. Extract:

Attach yourselves to bizziness in the erly part of life. Shun idle dissipated karacters az you would the plague. Listen to nature and reezon, and draw just ideas of things from theze pure sources; otherwize you wil imbibe fashionable sentiments, than which a more fatal evil cannot happen to you. You wil often heer bizziness condemned az drudgery and disgrace. Despize the sentiment. Nature speeks a different language. Nature tells you, "that she haz given you bodies, which require constant exercize; that labor or some other exercize iz essential to helth; that employment iz necessary to peece of mind; and industry iz the meens of acquiring property." Nature then haz rendered bizziness necessary to helth and happiness, az wel az to interest; and when men neglect her dictates, they are usually punished with poverty, diseeze and retchedness. It sometimes happens that a man's ancestors hav accumulated such an estate, that he iz wel secured from poverty; but the very estate he possesses, iz the meens of entailing upon him diseeze and all its consequential evils: For a rich man iz strongly tempted to be lazy; and indolence, by debilitating the animal system, destroys the power of enjoyment. Besides, a man of eezy circumstances iz very apt to looze the virtu of self denial; he indulges hiz appetite too freely; he becumes an epicure in eeting, and perhaps a bakkanalian; he iz then a slave of the worst kind, a slave to hiz own desires, and hiz faithful services to himself are rewarded with the gout.

When I still lived in America, I volunteered at the historical home of Noah Webster. He wrote a very interesting definition of cats. I think it's important for everyone to know how the writer of the first American dictionary felt about cats. He had some hot takes.

Listen, I know vampyres spell it "magick" in the HON-inverse, but it does beg the question if that fact means vampyres have a longstanding vendetta against Noah Webster that we don't know about.

The Hunt

Somewhere in the rolling hills and farm country that lie beyond speech Noah Webster and his assistants are moving across the landscape tracking down a new word. It is a small noun about the size of a mouse, one that will be seldom used by anyone, like a synonym for isthmus, but they are pursuing the creature zealously as if it were the verb to be, swinging their sticks and calling out to one another as they wade through a field of waist-high barley.

— Billy Collins, Questions About Angels (1999)

The Lieutenant Conundrum

How is lieutenant pronounced and has the British aversion to loo anything to do with toilets? #linguistics #pronunciation

Noah Webster might have radicalised the way that words were spelt in America, but some of his suggestions fell on stoney ground, such as tung for tongue, wimmen for women, and iland for island. He also waded into the debate around which letters should be included in the alphabet. Benjamin Franklin had argued that c, j, q, w, x, and y were unnecessary and that they should be replaced by symbols to…

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Noah Webster's Home

Built in 1823

Noah Webster and his wife Rebecca had this comfortable New Haven, Connecticut, home built in their later years to be near family and friends, as well as the library at nearby Yale College. While living in this house, Webster published his famous American Dictionary of the English Language in 1828. His dictionary aimed to capture distinctively American words and spellings for the first time. ------------------------------------------

Located at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, MI 

i can’t go 2 hell bcuz then i’d have 2 meet Noah Webster

An ad from Merriam-Webster.  

October 16, 2022 - GLOBAL CAT DAY – NATIONAL SPORTS DAY – NATIONAL LIQUEUR DAY – NATIONAL DICTIONARY DAY – DEPARTMENT STORE DAY

October 16, 2022 – GLOBAL CAT DAY – NATIONAL SPORTS DAY – NATIONAL LIQUEUR DAY – NATIONAL DICTIONARY DAY – DEPARTMENT STORE DAY

OCTOBER 16, 2022 | GLOBAL CAT DAY | NATIONAL SPORTS DAY | NATIONAL LIQUEUR DAY | NATIONAL DICTIONARY DAY | DEPARTMENT STORE DAY GLOBAL CAT DAY | OCTOBER 16 Global Cat Day on October 16th raises awareness surrounding non-lethal feline programs across the country. More than any other shelter animal, cats and kittens face euthanization at a much higher rate. However, programs such as trap, neuter,…

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American History: Webster's Dictionary

American History: Webster’s Dictionary

Noah Webster was not only a signer to the Constitution and a plain old wordsmith, he went far beyond and wrote the American dictionary. From what I have read it was clear to Webster it needed to be done to provide a basis for a common language for Americans to make English easier to read and write. Born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1758, it was Webster’s two-volume American Dictionary of the…

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