Noah Webster was described by the publisher of a competing dictionary as ?a vain ... plodding Yankee, who aspired to be a second Johnson??a criticism that rings mostly true. He was certainly vain and, born in Connecticut, undeniably a Yankee. Moreover, though he referred to Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language as a ?barren desart of philology, ? the American lexicographer relied heavily on the book during the creation of his own American Dictionary, going so far as to filch whole sections. And few would seem more ?plodding? than Webster, who was positively obsessed with collecting and...