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Comment by MithrilTuxedo | Hacker News Reader

Dictionaries have been trying to retard linguistic progress since the first edition of one tried to nail down every meaning of a term.

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Interestingly, you can trace “American” English becoming its own thing [1] to the publication of the first Webster dictionary that made a conscious effort to simplify spelling. American and British dialects have been diverging ever since (although British has been becoming more American since the turn of the millennium).

[1] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figures?id=10.1371...

Not accurate. Webster didn't originate the American dialect; it had been developing since the English first settled here.

Webster provided a common reference for the American dialect: he helped unify the dialect. Or partly unify: "Redd up your room annat" isn't comprehensible in most American cities, but is still proper English in Pittsburgh. (Of course, nowadays better dictionaries probably list "redd" and "annat", even if they're not used across all of the US.)

I disagree. Dictionaries are mostly descriptive as opposed to prescriptive. They wouldn’t be particularly useful if they weren’t.

That being said, I have seen people weaponize dictionary definitions if that’s what you were referring to.

I believe that is a more recent phenomenon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webster%27s_Third_New_Internat...

Now there's a damn dense joke, bravo

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