"OUT-FAWN, v. a. To excel in fawning. Hudibras."
"OUT-FEAT, v. a. To surpass in feats. Smart."
"OUT-FLASH, v. a. To surpass in flashing. Clarke."
Similar words occur at frequent intervals through nine columns. Dr. Webster is equally relentless, (even roping in a few estrays in his Appendix,) and we hardly know which has out-worded the other. We were surprised to find in neither the useful and legitimate substantive form of outgo, as the opposite of income. This superfluousness (unless we apply Voltaire's saying, "Le superflu, chose bien nécessaire" to dictionaries also) is the result, we suppose, of the rivalry of publishers, who have done their best to persuade the public that numerosity is the chief excellence in works of this kind, and that whoever buys their particular quarto may be sure of an honest pennyworth and of owning a thousand or two more words than his less judicious neighbors. In this way a false standard is manufactured, to which the lexicographer must conform, if he would have a remunerative sale for his book. He accordingly explores every lane and impasse in the purlieus of Grub Street, and pounces on a new word as a naturalist would on a new bug,—the stranger and uglier, the better. We regret that this kind of rivalry has been forced on Dr. Worcester; but he is so thorough, patient, and conscientious, that he leaves little behind him for the gleaner. We confess that the amplitude of his research has surprised us, highly as we were prepared to rate him in this respect by our familiarity with his former works. We have subjected his Dictionary to a pretty severe test. From the time of its publication we have made a point of seeking in it every unusual word, old or new, that we met with in our reading. We have been disappointed in hardly a single instance, and we are not acquainted with any other dictionary of which we could say as much.
An attempt has been made to damage Dr. Worcester's work by a partial comparison of his definitions with those of Dr. Webster; and here, again, the assumption has been, that number was of more importance than concise completeness. In the case of a quarto dictionary, we suppose an honest reviewer may confess that he has not read through the subject of his criticism. We have opened Dr. Webster's volume at random, and have found some of his definitions as extraordinarily inaccurate as many of his etymologies. They quite justify a double-entendre of Daniel Webster's, which we heard him utter many years ago in court. He had forced such a meaning upon some word in a paper connected with the case on trial, that the opposing counsel interrupted him to ask in what dictionary he found the word so defined. He silenced his questioner instantly with a happy play upon the name common to himself and the lexicographer: "In Webster's Dictionary, Sir!" We find in Webster, for example, the following definition of a word as to whose meaning he could have been set right by any coasting-skipper that sailed out of New Haven:—
"AMID-SHIPS; in marine language, the middle of a ship with regard to her length and breadth." Now, when one ship runs into another at sea and strikes her amid-ships, how is she to contrive to accomplish it so as to satisfy the requirements of this definition? Or if a sailor is said to be standing amidships, must he be planted precisely in what he would probably agree with Dr. Webster in spelling the center of the main-hatch? Dr. Worcester, quoting Falconer, is of course right.
We give another of Dr. Webster's definitions, which caught our eye in looking over his array of words compounded with out. "OUTWARD-BOUND; proceeding from a port or country." Now Dr. Webster does not tell his readers that the term is exclusively applicable to vessels; and we should like to know whence a vessel is likely to proceed, unless from a port,—and where ports are commonly situated, unless in countries? If an American ship be "proceeding from" the port of Liverpool to some port in the United States, how soon does she enter on what lexicographers call "the state of being" homeward-bound? The narrow limits to which Dr. Webster confines the word would not extend beyond the jaws of the harbor from which the ship is sailing. Dr. Worcester's definition is, "OUTWARD-BOUND. (Naut.) Bound outward or to foreign parts. Crabb."
Under the word MORESQUE we find in Webster the following definition: "A species of painting or carving done after the Moorish manner, consisting of grotesque pieces and compartments promiscuously interspersed; arabesque. Gwilt." (The Italics are our own.) We have not Mr. Gwilt's Encyclopaedia at hand; but if this be a fair representation of one of its definitions, it is a very untrustworthy authority. The last term to be applied to arabesque-work is grotesque, or promiscuously interspersed; and the description here given leaves out the most beautiful kind of arabesque, namely, the inlaid work of geometrical figures in colored marbles, in which the Arabs far surpassed the older opus Alexandrinum. Nothing could be less grotesque, less promiscuously interspersed, or more beautiful in its harmonious variety, than the work of this kind in the famous Capella Reale at Palermo.
Dr. Webster defines NIGHT-PIECE as "a piece of painting so colored as to be supposed seen by candle-light,"—a description which we suspect would have somewhat puzzled Gherardo della Notte.
We might give other instances, had we time and space; but our object is not to depreciate Webster, but only to show that the claim set up for him of superior exactness in definition is altogether gratuitous. We have found no inaccuracies comparable with these in Dr. Worcester's Dictionary, which we tried in precisely the same way, by opening it here and there at random. Moreover, looking at his work, not absolutely, but in comparison with Dr. Webster's, (as we are challenged to do,) we cannot leave out of view that the former is a first edition, while the latter has had the advantage of repeated revisions.