The very title of Dr. Webster's Dictionary indicates a radical misapprehension as to the nature and office of such a work. He calls the result of his labors an "American Dictionary of the English Language," as if provincialism were a merit. He evidently thought that the business of a lexicographer was to regulate, not to record. Sometimes also his zeal as an etymologist misled him, as in his famous attempt to make the word bridegroom more conformable to its supposed Anglo-Saxon root and its modern Teutonic congeners. It never occurred to him that we were still as far as ever from the goal, and that it would be quite as inconvenient to explain that the termination goom was a derivation from the Anglo-Saxon guma as that it was a corruption of it; the point to be gained being, after all, that we should be able to find out the meaning of the English word bridegroom, having no pressing need of guma for conversational purposes. We have spoken of this word only because we have heard it brought up against Dr. Webster as often as anything else, and because the disproportionate antipathy produced by this and a few similar oddities shows, that, the primary object of all writing being the clear conveyance of meaning, and not only so, but its conveyance in the most winning way, a writer blunders who wilfully estranges the reader's eye or jars upon its habitual associations, and that a lexicographer blunders still more desperately, who, upon system, teaches to offend in that kind. And it is amusing in respect to this very word bridegoom, that the whimsey is not Dr. Webster's own, but that the bee was put into his bonnet by Horne Tooke.
Webster in these matters was a bit of a Hotspur. He thought to deal with language as the vehement Percy would have done with the Trent. The smug and silver stream was to be allowed no more wilful windings, but to run
"In a new channel fair and evenly."
He found an equally hot-headed Glendower, wherever there was an educated man, ready with the answer,—
"Not wind? it shall; it must; you see it
doth."
"You see it doth" is an argument whose force no theorist ever takes into his reckoning.
We said that the title "American Dictionary of the English Language" was an absurdity. Fancy a "Cuban Dictionary of the Spanish Language." It would be of value only to the comparative philologist, curious in the changes of meaning, pronunciation, and the like, which circumstances are always bringing about in languages subjected to new conditions of life and climate. But we must not forget to say that the title chosen by Dr. Webster conveyed also a meaning creditable to his spirit and judgment. He always stoutly maintained the right of English as spoken in America to all the privileges of a living language. In opposition to the purists who would have clasped the language forever within the covers of Johnson, he insisted on the necessity of coining new words or adapting old ones to express new things and new relations. It is many years since we read his "Remarks" (if that was the title) on Pickering's "Vocabulary," and in answer to the rather supercilious criticisms on himself in the "Anthology"; but the impression left on our mind by that pamphlet is one of great respect for the good sense, acuteness, and courage of its author. And of his Dictionary it may safely be said, that, with all its mistakes, no work of the kind had then appeared so learned and so comprehensive. It may be doubted if any living language possessed at that time a dictionary, or one, at least, the work of a single man, in all respects its equal.
But etymologies are not the most important part of a good working dictionary, the intention of which is not to inform readers and writers what a word may have meant before the Dispersion, but what it means now. The pedigree of an adjective or substantive is of little consequence to ninety-nine men in a hundred, and the writers who have wielded our mother-tongue with the greatest mastery have been men who knew what words had most meaning to their neighbors and acquaintances, and did not stay their pens to ask what ideas the radicals of those words may possibly have conveyed to the mind of a bricklayer going up from Padanaram to seek work on the Tower of Babel. A thoroughly good etymological dictionary of English is yet to seek; and even if we should ever get one, it will be for students, and not for the laity. Nor is it the primary object of a common dictionary to trace the history of the language. Of great interest and importance to scholars, it is of comparatively little to Smith and Brown and their children at the public school. It is a work apart, which we hope to see accomplished by the London Philological Society in a manner worthy of comparison with what has been partly done for German by the brothers Grimm,—alas that the illustrious duality should have been broken by death! A lexicon of that kind should be an index to all the more eminent books in the language; but we do not hold this to be the office of a dictionary for daily reference. A dictionary that should embrace every unusual word, every new compound, every metaphorical turn of meaning, to be found in our great writers, would be a compendium of the genius of our authors rather than of our language; and a lexicographer who rakes the books of second and third-rate men for out-of-the-way phrases is doing us no favor. A dictionary is not a drag-net to bring up for us the broken pots and dead kittens, the sewerage of speech, as well as its living fishes. Nor do we think it a fair test of such a work, that one should seek in it for every odd word that may have tickled his fancy in a favorite author. Like most middle-aged readers, we have our specially private volumes. One of these—but we will not betray the secret of our loves—contains some rare words, such as the Gallicism mistresse-piece, and the delightful hybrid pundonnore for trifling points-of-honor; yet we by no means complain that we can find neither of them in Worcester, and only the former (with a ludicrously mistaken definition) in Webster.
A conclusive reason with us for preferring Dr. Worcester's Dictionary is, that its author has properly understood his functions, and has aimed to give us a true view of English as it is, and not as he himself may have wished it should be or thought it ought to he. Its etymologies are sufficient for the ordinary reader,—sometimes superfluously full, as where the same word is given over and over again in cognate languages. We do not see the use, under the word PLAIN, of taking up room with a list like the following: "L. planus; It. piano; Sp. piano; Fr. plain." Not content with this, Dr. Worcester gives it once more under PLAN: "L. planus, flat; It. piano, a plan; Sp. piano; Fr. plan.—Dut., Ger., Dan., and Sw. plan." Even yet we have not done with it, for under PLANE we find "L. planus; It. piano; Sp.plano, Fr. plan." One would think this rather a Polyglot Lexicon than an English Dictionary. It seems to us that no Romanic derivative of the Latin root should he given, unless to show that the word has come into English by that channel. And so of the Teutonic languages. If we have Danish, Swedish, German, and Dutch, why not Scotch, Icelandic, Frisic, Swiss, and every other conceivable dialectic variety?
Another fault of superfluousness we find in the number of compounded words, where the meaning is obvious,—such, for instance, as are formed with the adverb out, which the genius of the language permits without limit in the case of verbs. Dr. Worcester gives us, among many others,—