Wiktionary:Webster's Dictionary, 1913

Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language (herein referred to as Webster’s Dictionary, Webster 1913, or Webster) is a notable English dictionary in the public domain, originally published by the G. & C. Merriam Company of Springfield, Massachusetts.

Thanks to its lack of copyright restrictions, the dictionary has been used to vastly expand Wiktionary with more words and definitions.

Cleanup

Many of the definitions imported from Webster 1913 exhibit some of the following issues, which you can help solve:

• The definitions may be written in a dated style of English.
  • Carefully reword the definition, being mindful that the words used in Webster's original definition might carry a meaning which is no longer in current use.
• The definitions may contain many shades of meaning in one line, separated by semicolons.
  • Split the sense into multiple senses; move synonyms to a synonym line using {{syn|en|...}}; or remove redundant, duplicate or overly specific parts of the definition.
• The definitions may contain undated quotes, or name an author that used the term, e.g. this old revision of the word "kerve" (note, as July 2024, there are very few of them remaining - 29 according to this query)
  • Add the quote, or the date to the quote.
• The definition may contain "as", meaning "for example".
  • Put the example phrase into {{usex}}, modernizing it or deleting if it sounds awkward.
• The word, or the sense of it that this old dictionary entered, may be obsolete (no longer in use) or dated (still in use but widely considered old-fashioned).
  • Add appropriate sense labels: {{lb|en|obsolete}}, {{lb|en|archaic}} or {{lb|en|dated}}.
• Modern senses of the word may be missing.
  • Add any senses you are aware of.
• For very old words, the word's spelling may have been altered ("normalised" or modernised) by Webster into a form that was never actually used.
• Webster did not distinguish between Old English, Middle English and Modern English. Wiktionary treats words that were only used before 1500 as part of Middle English.
  • If you believe these two cases apply to a word, send it to requests for verification.

Abbreviations

There are two different lists of abbreviations depending on the type.

• Wiktionary:Abbreviated Authorities in Webster lists abbreviations of literary works and authors (e.g. "Hawthorne" = "Nathaniel Hawthorne").
• Wiktionary:Abbreviations in Webster lists abbreviations of grammatical terms (e.g. "p. p." = "past participle").

More data

One can add more data to the word indicating synonyms, crossreferencing synonyms, citations, related terms and derived terms. Some certainly needing more data can be found at Category:Requests for quotations by source

See also

• {{R:Webster 1913}} – A template used by pages which reference Webster 1913
• Wiktionary:Entry layout – Wiktionary guide to how an entry should look
• Wiktionary:FAQ#Writing definitions – A guide to writing good definitions
• Webster's Dictionary on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

External links

• Project Gutenberg: The Gutenberg Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, #673, in eBook format.
• Project Gutenberg: Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, #29765, plain text