Webster's Dictionary 1828

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Webster's Dictionary from 1828 is one of the best resources to use for looking up definitions of words in the King James Bible that have gone out of popular use.

You can download the files on the Git repo. The source is available on Codeberg.

Introduction

The purpose for creating this is to preserve, and promote the use of, the 1828 version of Webster's Dictionary. After reviewing several dictionaries, I found this one to have the best definitions, especially for understanding things written during the 17th-19th centuries. Dictionaries that came out in the 20th and 21st centuries are lackluster compared to the previous ones, since post-modernists felt that language was another "social construct" that needed to be torn apart and turned into nothing. You can clearly see this by comparing definitions over time, where they become more vague and sometimes even the opposite of what they were originally.

There are already online versions of the 1828 dictionary available, but I wanted some offline options so that I could avoid the massive distraction of the Internet while studying. I also converted the 1844 dictionary since the source was available and it isn't that bad, but I will only be updating this version. The 1913 dictionary file was a mess, so I didn't convert that, but there are StarDict and Apple formats for the 1913 dictionary out there already.

A Work in Progress

I try to work on this when I can, but if you'd like to contribute to this project by fixing some formatting or spelling errors, please open a pull request. There are approximately 600 words that still need to be fixed and added to the webster1828.csv file, located in the words-in-progress.csv file. To fix these, I usually review the entries in the scans of the original dictionary on archive.org (Vol. 1 and Vol. 2). So far, I've noticed a lot of the missing entries are ones that use the same definition as another word, so I just copy the existing definition from webster1828.csv.

Note that the words-in-progress.csv file contains more columns than the webster1828.csv file. Only two columns are used in webster1828.csv: one for the word and the other for the definition. The words-in-progress.csv has some definitions that may be correct, but are broken between multiple columns. The "word" column is the one used for the word. There are also some minor issues like unclosed html tags in this file, but I will take care of these soon. Before a word is added into the webster1828.csv, these issues will need to be resolved so the SWORD module will validate.

Installation Instructions

  • Apple Mac OS X/macOS: Unzip the archive and copy the .dictionary file to /Library/Dictionaries/ for all users or ~/Library/Dictionaries/ for the current user. If the Dictionary app isn't working properly, you may need to run this in Terminal: rm ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.DictionaryServices/DictionaryCache.plist and restart the app to clear out the cache.
  • SWORD module: The best way to install is using the official CrossWire repo, but an archive has been provided for local installations.
  • KOReader: Unzip the StarDict archive and copy the directory to /.adds/koreader/data/dict/
  • Amazon Kindle: Unzip the archive and copy the .mobi file to /documents/dictionaries/ You may need to restart your Kindle before it will work properly.
  • Rakuten Kobo: Rename the webster1828-x.x-kobo.zip to dicthtml-pt-en.zip (which will replace the Portuguese to English dictionary, use another language if you don't want that) and copy it to /.kobo/dict/
  • Plato: Unzip the StarDict archive and copy the directory to /.adds/plato/dictionaries/

This has been tested with:

  • The Dictionary.app in Mac OS X Snow Leopard. It may work with earlier versions and should work with whatever garbage OS Apple is putting out now.
  • The SWORD module using MacSword and Xiphos.
  • KOReader (2023 release) running on a Kobo Aura H2O.
  • An Amazon Kindle Paperwhite.

I don't use Kobo's built-in dictionary or Plato, so I cannot vouch for the quality of those.