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Article: Dictionaries
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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DICTIONARIES
DICTIONARIES.
In the colonial era, Americans used British dictionaries. While dictionaries were published in the colonies during the late eighteenth century, nearly all of them were based on the famous 1755 lexicon compiled by Samuel Johnson in London. Dictionaries of the English language were not widely used until the early nineteenth century, when the expansion of print culture and basic schooling moved the dictionary into countless homes and offices. Dictionaries came in various sizes but most popular was the "school dictionary," a book about as big as a contemporary pocket dictionary. The first dictionary compiled by an American was Samuel Johnson Jr.'s
A School ...