crumb

pontif pontiff

ake } ache
ache}

maiz maize

gimblet gimlet

feather} feather
fether }

steady} steady
steddy}

mosk mosque

ribin ribbon

cutlas cutlass

skain skain}
skein}

sherif sheriff

porpess porpoise

It should be added that in many cases where the later editors have
receded from Webster's advanced position they have added a note
approving his innovation as etymologically correct and preferable. There
can be no doubt that Webster was careless and inconsistent in his entry
of these words, since he would venture his improvement under the word,
fling scorn at the current usage, and then, when using the word
elsewhere in definition or in compounds, forget his improvement and
follow the customary orthography. From our rapid survey of the
orthography, however, it may be said in general that Webster's decision
in the case of classes of words has been maintained in subsequent
editions, but his individual alterations have been regarded as
contributions to an impossibly ideal correct orthography, and quietly
dropped. The fact illustrates Webster's strength and weakness. His
notions on the subject of uniformity were often very sensible, and he
had the advantage of reducing to order what was hopelessly chaotic in
common usage. But his sense of the stability of usage was imperfect, and
when he moved among the words at random, arranging the language to suit
his personal taste, he discovered or his successors did that words have
roots of another kind than what etymologists regard.

Webster was wont to defend himself against the common charge of
proposing new forms of words, by showing that, if one went far enough
back, he would be sure to come upon the same forms in English
literature; that his aim was to restore, not to invent, and to bring
back the language to its earlier and historic shape. This is a defense
familiar to us in these later days of spelling reform; and no one
doubts, who knows the chaos of English spelling before the days of
printing, that authority could be found for any favorite mode of
spelling a word. Webster claimed the same conservative principles in the
matter of pronunciat