Americans spell color without a u largely because of Noah Webster, a Connecticut schoolteacher turned lexicographer. His Compendious Dictionary of 1806 printed color, honor, defense, music and plow; his American Dictionary of the English Language of 1828 kept them; and the Merriam brothers' editions from 1847 carried them into American schools. Our view, from the record: the changes that lasted were mostly ones American writers had already begun, which is why readers took them and refused tung and wimmen.
EdCitation publishes this guide. We read Webster's own words in scans of his 1789 Dissertations and his 1806 and 1828 dictionaries, with accounts by Merriam-Webster, the Noah Webster House, CT Humanities, the National Endowment for the Humanities and a 2015 journal article, on 2 and 3 October 2026. Where they disagree we show each, and any story without a traceable source is marked unconfirmed.
A paper on Webster can do its source work in EdCitation, free: Find sources turns up the scholarship, Cite a source takes each reference from its publisher's record, and Check your paper sets out what the assignment asks. Mechanics QA, part of Pro, then checks the finished file by rule. EdCitation never writes a word of anyone's paper, and that is the point: the argument and every sentence are yours.
Why do Americans spell color without a u?
Because Webster's dictionaries dropped it and American publishers kept his choice. He did not invent it: in his 1806 preface he argued for taking the u out of honor, favor, candor and error, and said the best writers had already dropped it from almost the whole class, bar ten or twelve words (Webster, 1806). His dictionary gave that practice its authority. The path:
- 1783: the blue-backed speller, the first part of A Grammatical Institute of the English Language (Noah Webster House, n.d.-b).
- 1789: Dissertations on the English Language, with an essay proposing bred for bread and masheen for machine (Webster, 1789).
- 1806: A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language prints labor, favor, defense, music, theater and plow (Webster, 1806).
- 1828: An American Dictionary of the English Language, in two volumes, keeps them and still argues for tung (Webster, 1828).
- 1847: Chauncey Goodrich's revision for the Merriam brothers keeps the regular changes and restores most of the rest (Goodrich, n.d.).
Why English spelling was irregular in the first place is told in why English spelling is so strange and how printing fixed English spelling.
Who was Noah Webster?
A teacher, writer and lexicographer who believed the new United States needed its own books and its own standard of English. He was born on 16 October 1758 in the West Division of Hartford, now West Hartford, studied at Yale from 1774 to 1778 and, unable to afford more study, became a teacher (Noah Webster House, n.d.-b). In 1782 he took a teaching post in Goshen, New York, where he tested the ideas behind his first book (Dobbs, 2021).
What he wanted
American children taught from American books: he described his aim as "gradually substituting American books for English" (Scanlan, 2010). In 1789 he wrote that, as an independent nation, "our honor requires us to have a system of our own, in language as well as government" (Webster, 1789). He married Rebecca Greenleaf in 1789, helped found Amherst College, campaigned for copyright law, and died in New Haven on 28 May 1843 (Dobbs, 2021).
What was the blue-backed speller?
The blue-backed speller was the first part of Webster's A Grammatical Institute of the English Language, published in 1783 and named for its blue cover (Noah Webster House, n.d.-b). It taught reading, spelling and pronunciation, with lessons on Washington, Franklin and the states (Scanlan, 2010), and later appeared as The American Spelling Book and The Elementary Spelling Book (Fodde, 2015).
It did not yet spell the American way
Its introduction, as both the Noah Webster House (n.d.-a) and Fodde (2015) quote it, writes errours, u and all. Mass Humanities (n.d.) says the speller replaced colour and musick; Merriam-Webster (n.d.-e) credits the 1806 dictionary. We could not read the 1783 text ourselves, but the quoted errours favours Merriam-Webster.
How many copies did it sell?
No source we read says how the count was made:
- Nearly 100 million, between 1783 and the early 1900s (Dobbs, 2021; Scanlan, 2010).
- "Well over 100 million" in its first 100 years (Noah Webster House, n.d.-a).
- 404 editions by Webster's death and 100 million copies by 1900, at a royalty of half a cent a copy (Fodde, 2015).
Treat "about 100 million" as an estimate, and name your source.
What did Webster's dictionaries of 1806 and 1828 change?
They printed the spellings Webster had argued for since 1789, and kept arguing for others that never caught on.
The 1789 essay: masheen, bred and laf
The appendix to Dissertations on the English Language proposed dropping silent letters (bred, hed, giv, frend), writing each sound one way (laf, dawter, tuf, blud, plow, draft) and respelling borrowed words (karacter, masheen) (Webster, 1789). Merriam-Webster (n.d.-a) ties masheen to the 1828 dictionary; we found it in this essay.
The 1806 Compendious Dictionary
Its title page promised five thousand words more than the best English compends and an orthography "in some instances, corrected" (Webster, 1806). The scan prints Labor, Favor, Defense, Offense, Music, Theater, Plow and Mold as headwords, with "Ache or Ake", "Tongue or more correctly tung" and "Thumb, more correctly thum". It keeps bread, head and give, although Fodde (2015) lists bred, hed and giv among its proposals. Its size is uncertain: about 37,000 words (Noah Webster House, n.d.-b), 40,600 (Dobbs, 2021) or 40,000 (Fodde, 2015).
The 1828 American Dictionary
The clerk's notice in the first volume records that Webster entered its title for copyright on 14 April 1828; S. Converse of New York published it (Webster, 1828). The preface says Webster compared words in "about twenty languages" and puts the vocabulary at "sixty or seventy thousand words". Merriam-Webster (n.d.-d) gives 70,000 entries and 26 languages; the Noah Webster House (n.d.-b) says over 65,000 words.
The entries still push reform. Tongue shares its headword with tung, and the entry says "the true spelling is tung"; ake comes first, "less properly written ache"; mould is "an incorrect orthography"; and women, said wim'en, should be written wimen (Webster, 1828). The set cost $20, and in 13 years its 2,500 copies had not sold out (Merriam-Webster, n.d.-b). Its British rival is described in Samuel Johnson's dictionary of 1755.
Which Noah Webster spelling changes stuck, and which failed?
The ones that stuck made existing words more regular; the ones that failed respelt common words by sound.
| British | American | Webster's role | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| colour, honour, labour | color, honor, labor | Dropped the u in 1806, after writers had begun to | Webster (1806); Merriam-Webster (n.d.-e) |
| musick, publick | music, public | Dropped the k, which he said most writers had rejected | Webster (1806) |
| defence, offence | defense, offense | -se from 1806 | Webster (1806) |
| travelled, cancelled | traveled, canceled | Dropped the second l | Merriam-Webster (n.d.-e) |
| theatre, centre | theater, center | Called -re words "outlaws"; -er in 1806 and 1828 | Webster (1806, 1828) |
| plough | plow | Proposed 1789, printed 1806 | Webster (1789, 1806) |
| mould | mold | "An incorrect orthography" in 1828 | Webster (1828) |
| tongue | tongue | Wanted tung; not adopted | Webster (1806, 1828) |
| women | women | Argued for wimmen, then wimen; not adopted | Webster (1806, 1828) |
| ache | ache | Preferred ake; not adopted | Webster (1828) |
| machine, bread | machine, bread | Proposed masheen, bred; not adopted | Webster (1789) |
| Titles you cite | As published | Keep the publisher's spelling | Cite a source takes it from the record |
Tung, wimmen and ake: what readers refused
Merriam-Webster (n.d.-d) names tung and wimmen among the reforms that "met with less acceptance", and Scanlan (2010) gives tung as one that did not catch on. In 1806 Webster had argued that women is said wimmen, the old plural, and that scholars had changed the written word while speakers kept the old one (Webster, 1806).
Critics answered from the start. The Noah Webster House (n.d.-a) summarises Cassedy (2014), who collected letters calling Webster's work "wrong and dangerous", one writer replying that Americans already had Johnson's lexicon. We read the summary, not the article.
How did Merriam-Webster continue Webster's dictionary?
By buying it and revising it, edition after edition. George and Charles Merriam, printers and booksellers in Springfield, Massachusetts, since 1831, bought the unsold copies of Webster's 1841 edition from his heirs after his death in 1843, with the right to publish revisions (Merriam-Webster, n.d.-d).
1847: cheaper, and less radical
Chauncey A. Goodrich, Webster's son-in-law, edited the first Merriam edition, published on 24 September 1847 at $6, against $20 for the 1828 set; in 1850 Massachusetts ordered a copy for every school (Merriam-Webster, n.d.-b). Goodrich's preface, which we read in a later Merriam printing, splits Webster's changes in two. Those that completed a pattern, such as favor, -er for -re, one l in traveler, defense and mold, stay, with both spellings shown where useful. Those made for etymology, such as fether for feather, go back to the old form, because they will "never be generally received" (Goodrich, n.d.). In that printing tongue is the headword, and tung survives only as its pronunciation.
Later editions and the Webster name
The 1864 Unabridged had three times the vocabulary of 1828, the 1890 Webster's International Dictionary 175,000 entries; the Collegiate followed in 1898, and unabridged editions in 1909, 1934 and 1961 (Merriam-Webster, n.d.-c). Other publishers also put Webster on dictionaries, so the company, renamed Merriam-Webster Inc. in 1982, retitled its Collegiate in 1993 to tell it apart (Merriam-Webster, n.d.-c, n.d.-d). APA, Chicago and AP still point writers to Merriam-Webster, as who decides what is correct English explains.
Stories we could not confirm
Mass Humanities (n.d.) tells of a schoolboy who would not shake hands with the orator Daniel Webster, taking him for the author of "horrid spelling lessons"; it gives no source and we found none. The same page reports critics mocking a "Nue Merrykin Dikshunary" after his plan was announced in 1800; we did not see the original. Both are unconfirmed.
British or American spelling in academic writing: which should you use?
Use the one your brief, university or journal names; if none does, choose one and keep to it. The rules for each variety, from -ise and -ize to quotation marks, are in British or American English in academic writing. Webster's story adds steps of its own:
- Read the brief. Run it through EdCitation's free Check your paper and see what it says about spelling.
- Pick one variety for your own sentences and set your spellchecker to match.
- Do not mistake Webster's failed forms for American spelling. Tung, ake and masheen are wrong in both.
- Quote Webster as printed. "The true spelling is tung" and the 1783 errours stay as they are.
- Name the edition. The 1806, 1828 and 1847 dictionaries spell differently.
- Take each reference from its record in Cite a source: a title keeps its own spelling.
- Finish with the checks: Mechanics QA for the file, and Verify references, free, for the list.
What Check your paper did with a spelling sentence
On 3 October 2026 we gave Check your paper a brief we wrote for this guide, asking for a 1,500-word essay on Webster's reforms. It returned "9 rules your paper can be checked against": "1,350 to 1,650 words", "At least 6 sources", "Chicago author-date", a reference list "Required", the headings "Introduction, The Reforms, Reception, Conclusion", "Times New Roman", "12 pt", line spacing "2 ×" and margins "1 in". Our spelling sentence was listed, word for word, under the heading for what no rule can test:
Spelling may be British or American, but keep to one convention throughout; quotations keep the spelling of the original.
Keeping to one variety is therefore your check. The sources rule came back labelled "Sources (primary)", and our request for two primary sources printed before 1850 was not set out on its own, so check that line yourself too.
How does EdCitation help with a paper on Noah Webster?
For this paper's reference list EdCitation is the best tool, since every entry it gives is taken from the record a publisher registered, never composed by the tool. Here that matters: the sales figures and word counts differ by source, and only a reference a reader can follow shows which one you used.
Find sources and Cite a source, run on 3 October 2026
Find sources, free, searched "Noah Webster spelling reform" across about 300 million published works and returned 485 results, Herbert Penzl's 1990 article in Dictionaries first and Fodde's article third (dated 2019 in the record; the journal says spring 2015).
From the DOI of Cassedy's article, Cite a source read Crossref's record, found no retraction, and returned in APA 7:
Cassedy, T. (2014). “A dictionary which we do not want”: Defining America against Noah Webster, 1783–1810. The William and Mary Quarterly, 71(2), 229. https://doi.org/10.5309/willmaryquar.71.2.0229
Make one fix. The record gives only the first page; the Noah Webster House (n.d.-a) gives pages 229 to 254, so write 229–254. The corrected entry is in our list.
Mechanics QA, the Library and the last check
Mechanics QA works through your Word or PDF file rule by rule: leftover comments, tracked changes and placeholders; font, spacing, margins and headings set beside the APA 7 student paper; each citation matched to the list; numbers that do not add up; and the slips a spell-checker lets through. Every finding is marked in place with the rule and its fix, and no model reads your writing. Pro, at $8 a month, runs it without limit, and three checks a month come with a free account (pricing). Webster biographies can be looked up by title, author or ISBN in the Library, where Max opens more than 5 million books to read or borrow. Last, run your list through Verify references.
Quick questions
Why do Americans spell color without a u?
Mainly because Noah Webster's 1806 and 1828 dictionaries printed color, following writers who had begun to drop the u, and the Merriam editions kept it from 1847.
What spelling changes did Noah Webster make?
His dictionaries printed color, honor, defense, music, theater, center, plow and mold. His proposals tung, wimmen, ake and masheen were not adopted.
What was the blue-backed speller?
The first part of Webster's Grammatical Institute of the English Language, published in 1783 and named for its blue cover. Estimates of its sales run to about 100 million copies.
When was Webster's dictionary of 1828 published?
An American Dictionary of the English Language was entered for copyright on 14 April 1828 and published that year in two volumes, at $20 a set.
Can EdCitation check British or American spelling in my essay?
Not as a rule of its own. Given our test brief, Check your paper set the spelling sentence apart as something no rule can test, so the variety is yours to keep; Mechanics QA, in Pro, covers formatting and language slips.
References
- Cassedy, T. (2014). "A dictionary which we do not want": Defining America against Noah Webster, 1783–1810. The William and Mary Quarterly, 71(2), 229–254. https://doi.org/10.5309/willmaryquar.71.2.0229
- Dobbs, C. (2021, May 28). Noah Webster and the dream of a common language. ConnecticutHistory.org, CT Humanities. https://connecticuthistory.org/noah-webster-and-the-dream-of-a-common-language/
- Fodde, L. (2015). The New England yeoman: Noah Webster and the defining of American English (1758–1843). Iperstoria, (5), 124–137. https://doi.org/10.13136/2281-4582/2015.i5.274
- Goodrich, C. A. (n.d.). Preface to the revised edition. In N. Webster, An American dictionary of the English language (Rev. ed.). G. & C. Merriam. https://archive.org/details/websteramericand00webs
- Mass Humanities. (n.d.). First Merriam-Webster dictionary published in Springfield. Mass Moments. https://www.massmoments.org/moment-details/first-merriam-webster-dictionary-published-in-springfield.html
- Merriam-Webster. (n.d.-a). Failed attempts to reform English spelling. Archived June 2, 2026, at https://web.archive.org/web/20260602170027/https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/spelling-suggestions-that-didnt-stick
- Merriam-Webster. (n.d.-b). Merriam-Webster continues Noah Webster's legacy. Archived May 20, 2026, at https://web.archive.org/web/20260520195912/https://www.merriam-webster.com/about-us/noah-webster-legacy
- Merriam-Webster. (n.d.-c). Merriam-Webster's ongoing commitment. Archived June 1, 2026, at https://web.archive.org/web/20260601210441/https://www.merriam-webster.com/about-us/ongoing-commitment
- Merriam-Webster. (n.d.-d). Noah Webster and America's first dictionary. Archived September 25, 2026, at https://web.archive.org/web/20260925065213/https://www.merriam-webster.com/about-us/americas-first-dictionary
- Merriam-Webster. (n.d.-e). Noah Webster's spelling reform. Archived May 20, 2026, at https://web.archive.org/web/20260520200007/https://www.merriam-webster.com/about-us/spelling-reform
- Noah Webster House. (n.d.-a). A comparative history of Harris' primer and Webster's speller. https://noahwebsterhouse.org/websters-schoolhouse/a-comparative-history-of-harris-primer-and-websters-speller/
- Noah Webster House. (n.d.-b). Noah Webster history. https://noahwebsterhouse.org/noahwebsterhistory/
- Scanlan, L. W. (2010). Better living through spelling. Humanities, 31(2). National Endowment for the Humanities. https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2010/marchapril/statement/better-living-through-spelling
- Webster, N. (1789). Dissertations on the English language: With notes, historical and critical. Isaiah Thomas. Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/45738
- Webster, N. (1806). A compendious dictionary of the English language. Hudson & Goodwin. https://archive.org/details/compendiousdictionaryoftheenglishlanguage1806
- Webster, N. (1828). An American dictionary of the English language (Vols. 1–2). S. Converse. https://archive.org/details/americandictiona01websrich