Webster, Noah

1. An educator and author of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, best known for his American Dictionary of the English Language and Blue-Backed Speller. He worked for the establishment of a distinctive American version of the English language; for example, he insisted on spellings such as wagon, center, and honor in place of the standard British waggon, centre, and honour.

A number of widely used dictionaries still bear Webster's name.