led the list, it is true, by the use of compounds under
_un_ and similar prefixes, but the noticeable fact remains that he
incorporated in the Dictionary a vast number of words which previously
had led a private and secluded life in special word-books. His object
being to make a dictionary for the American people, his ambition was to
produce a book which should render all other books of its class
unnecessary. Webster himself enumerates the words added in his
Dictionary under five heads:--

1. Words of common use, among which he notes: grand-jury, grand-juror,
eulogist, consignee, consignor, mammoth, maltreatment, iceberg,
parachute, malpractice, fracas, entailment, perfectibility, glacier,
fire-warden, safety-valve, savings-bank, gaseous, lithographic,
peninsular, repealable, retaliatory, dyspeptic, missionary, nervine,
meteoric, mineralogical, reimbursable; to quarantine, revolutionize,
retort, patent, explode, electioneer, reorganize, magnetize.

2. Participles of verbs, previously omitted, and often having an
adjective value.

3. Terms of frequent occurrence in historical works, especially those
derived from proper names, such as Shemitic, Augustan, Gregorian.

4. Legal terms.

5. Terms in the arts and sciences. This was then the largest storehouse,
as it has since been, and the reader may be reminded that this great
start in lexicography was coincident with the beginning of modern
scientific research.

The greatest interest, however, which Webster's vocabulary has for us is
in its justification of the title to his Dictionary. It was an American
Dictionary, and no one who examines it attentively can fail to perceive
how unmistakably it grounds itself on American use. Webster had had an
American education; he made his dictionary for the American people, and
as in orthography and pronunciation he followed a usage which was mainly
American, in his words and definitions he knew no authority beyond the
usage of his own country. Webster's Dictionary of 1807 had already
furnished Pickering with a large number of words for his vocabulary of
supposed Americanisms, and Webster had replied, defending the words
against the charge of corruption; the Dictionary of 1828 would have
supplied many more of the same class. The Americanism, as an English
scholar of that day would have judged it, was either in the word itself
or in some special application of it. Webster, like many later writers,
pointed out that words which had th