"Locate, v. t., 2. To select, survey, and settle the bounds of a particular tract of land; or to designate a portion of land by limits; as, to locate a tract of a hundred acres in a particular township. U. States. 3. To designate and determine the place of; as, a committee was appointed to locate a church or a court-house. N. England.
"Rail, n., 1. A cross beam fixed at the ends in two upright posts. Moxon. [In New England this is never called a beam; pieces of timber of the proper size for rails are called scantling.] 2. In the United States a piece of timber cleft, hewed, or sawed, rough or smooth, inserted in upright posts for fencing. The common rails among farmers are rough, being used as they are split from the chestnut or other trees. The rails used in fences of boards or pickets round gentlemen's houses and gardens are usually sawed scantling, and often dressed with the plane. 4. A series of posts connected with cross beams, by which a place is inclosed. Johnson. In New England we never call this series a rail, but by the general term railing. In a picket fence, the pales or pickets rise above the rails; in a ballustrade, or fence resembling it, the ballusters usually terminate in the rails.
"Tallow, n. A sort of animal fat, particularly that which is obtained from animals of the sheep and ox kinds.... The fat of swine we never call tallow, but lard or suet. I see in English books, mention is made of the tallow of hogs, but in America I never heard the word thus applied.
"Prairy, n. [Fr. prairie.] An extensive tract of land, mostly level, destitute of trees, and covered with tall, coarse grass. These prairies are numerous in the United States, west of the Alleghany Mountains, especially between the Ohio, Mississippi, and the great lakes.
"Widen, v. t. To make wide or wider; to extend in breadth; as, to widen a field; to widen a breach. [Note. In America, females say, to widen a stocking.]
"Window, n. An opening in the wall of a building for the admission of light, and of air when necessary. This opening has a frame on the sides, in which are set movable sashes, containing panes of glass. In the U. States the sashes are made to rise and fall, for the admission or exclusion of air. In France windows are shut with frames or sashes that open and shut vertically, like the leaves of a folding door.
"Chore, n. [Eng. char.] In America this word denotes small work of a domestic kind, as distinguished from the principal work of the day. It is generally used in the plural, chores, which includes the daily or occasional business of feeding cattle and other animals, preparing fuel, sweeping the house, cleaning furniture, etc. (See char.)"
From these examples one may gather some notion of Webster's method of treating words which were either exclusively American, or had undergone some change in meaning and use. He regards them all not as departures from the English standard of the day, but diversities from an older use, like the English current forms, and it was no disgrace in his eyes for a word to be an Americanism, nor did it require apology or defense of any kind. There are indeed many words not to be found in Johnson, of American origin, or at least of American adoption, which he enters silently with the belief that they have quite as fair a claim to a place in his Dictionary as if they had been used by Dryden or Addison. I have already quoted the passage in his preface relating to the illustrative quotations; the promise made by Webster is faithfully kept, and the diligent reader may garner many of the brief thoughts of Mason, Smith, Barlow, and other American writers whose light has now faded.
By all these means, by a certain contempt of Great Britain, by constant reference to American usage, by citations from American authors, Webster made the title to his Dictionary good in every part of it, while by the exercise of individual caprice and of a personal authority, which had grown out of his long-continued and solitary labor, he attached his own name to it. Both names remain. The existing Dictionary is "An American Dictionary of the English Language," and bears indubitable evidence of its application to American use, but it is no longer the organ of an over-zealous patriotism. It bears Noah Webster's name on the title-page, but the work has been revised, not out of all likeness to its original form, but with a fullness and precision which, being impossible to any one man, required the coöperation of a company of scholars. His original Preface to the edition of 1828 has been preserved as a memento of his attitude in the presence of his great work, but his Introduction and Advertisement and Grammar of the English Language have been swept away, and their place supplied by the maturer and more scholarly work of Webster's successors.