That book-thing what tells ya what those wordy-bits mean

Happy Birthday Noah! Not the dude with the Ark, but the dude that delivered us out of trying to figure out why colour and humour had an extra u in ’em. October 16th is Noah Webster’s birthday and also called Dictionary Day in his honor. As stated here, it’s not a national holiday though I’m not sure that our current president would even be able to read the proclamation if it were.

The holiday, unofficial as it may be, reaches pretty far back to first being celebrated in 1908 [PDF]:

New Haven is talking of a fitting celebration, Oct. 16, of the 150th anniversary of Noah Webster’s birth. Dr. Johnson, on the authority of Thackeray’s Miss Pinkerton and others, must ever be renowned as “the great lexicographer,” but all true Americans esteem the author of the first “American Dictionary of the English Language” at his worth.

So for today, at least, how about we all turn on those spell checkers in our outgoing e-mails and our web browsers? Maybe throw around a few big words, no need to be niggardly with the language. Yeah, I said it, however I know what it actually means! Besides, when the repertoire of your personal lexicon is prodigious, it only takes a few carefully placed displays of loquaciousness to broadly facilitate the obfuscation of your true intent when engaging in discourse with boors and half-wits.

Though for that last sentence, I think I best raise a glass on January 8th, for Peter Roget. 😉 Now I’m off to go look that up in my Funk and Wagnalls.