Webster's Unabridged Dictionary
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Summary
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Language learners and researchers studying the history of dictionaries or the evolution of English vocabulary
- Translators who need to consult nineteenth-century English definition styles for comparison
- Readers interested in Project Gutenberg's electronic texts who want to know about its dictionary resources
Not a good fit for
- Ordinary English learners who need a complete dictionary for everyday lookups
- Readers expecting modern definitions, pronunciation, and usage notes
- General readers hoping to read continuously and gain systematic knowledge
Reading tips
- Treat it as a reference text: skip through in alphabetical order, picking entries of interest to compare their definitions with those in a modern dictionary
- Before reading, keep in mind that this is an excerpt, and avoid mistaking it for a complete dictionary
- Excerpt typical entries as notes to observe differences between nineteenth-century definition wording and contemporary usage
About the publisher
Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.
Contents
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About the author
Noah Webster (1758–1843) was an American lexicographer, educator, political essayist, and editor, and a graduate of Yale University. He is best known for compiling the American Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1828, which established standards for American spelling and earned him the title of "father of American scholarship and education." The library holds 15 of his works, including various sections of the multi-volume Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, as well as Dissertations on the English Language, with Notes, Historical and Critical and A Collection of Essays and Fugitiv Writings, which span language study and political essays. His writing aimed to standardize the language and serve education, and it had a lasting influence on the shaping of American English.
