Pronunciations became a new element of dictionaries

The next feature to be added to dictionaries was the systematic and accurate indication of pronunciations. Bailey and Johnson had indicated the proper accentuation of words, but had made no further attempt to show their sounds.

This was first done by William Kenrick (1772), who was followed in 1780 by Thomas Sheridan, father of the famous dramatist. In 1791, John walker, a former actor and lecturer on elocution, issued his Critical Pronouncing Dictionary, which became as great an authority on pronunciation as Johnson was on definitions and quotations.

Except for this addition, the efforts of lexicographers for many years after the publication of Johnson's Dictionary were confined to attempts to supplement and to perfect that work. It was reprinted and revised many times, the best edition being that of the Rev. H.J. Todd (London,1818), which is not yet wholly superseded [as of 1925].

The first to enter into competition with Johnson by making an independent work was Charles Richardson, whose New Dictionary of the English Language (1837) was based on the theory that definitions were a subordinate matter and illustrations by quotations the essential thing.

The result was an extremely valuable repertory of passages from the best writers from 1300 down to his own time, but the plan of the work prevented it from being a popular success.

Meantime, the first great American lexicographer, Noah Webster (1758-1843), started a series of dictionaries which culminated in the American Dictionary of the English Language. This work was based on a new and extensive collection of material, and as the name implies, was an American dictionary, introducing words which had hitherto been regarded as provincial and illustrating usage by quotations from American as well as from British writers.

Webster didn't confine himself to the best authors, believing that "language was an instrument not so much of literature as of daily association." He gave elaborate rules for spelling and pronunciation and in various appendices, as well as in the definitions of certain words, he included much encyclopedic matter.

The work appeared in several editions during its author's lifetime, and was continued after his death by his son-in-law Chauncey Allen Goodrich (1790-1890), and later by Noah Porter (1811-1892), President of Yale College. For many years the supremacy of Webster's Dictionary in America was disputed by that of Joseph Emerson Worcester (1784-1865), who differed from Webster on many points of spelling and pronunciation, as well as, in treating the language objectively rather than didactically.

The victory in the "war of dictionaries" seems to have been won by Webster, although his etymologies, which were the least successful part of his work, have been generally discarded, while many of the characteristic features of the book have been modified or dropped. It still bears the name of its founder, but in its title American has been replaced by International.