Ummm...No(ah)

As I was flipping through the channels over the weekend, I stopped for a second on ESPN and there was some football player being interviewed on the side of the field.  I am not sure but I think it might have had something to do the BCS championship game so it could have possibly been one of the players for Auburn or Oregon.  I don't really watch football so I didn't recognize the player or the uniform...honestly I wasn't even watching, just flipping up to a different channel.

Anyhow, on the brief second that I was on the channel before my thumb had a chance to push the up button again,  I heard a quote similar to this "...and you can check that in Daniel Webster's dictionary!"  My brain yelled "stop" but my thumb was already in motion and by the time I was able to get back to ESPN they were headed to commercial.  But I know what I heard and I laughed about it for 10 minutes.

Daniel Webster was a Constitutional lawyer, Congressman, and Secretary of State in the 1800's.  Most people now mostly remember him for the story and films "The Devil and Daniel Webster."  His name was also used by Mark Twain for the name of a frog in his story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County".  There is also a Daniel Webster College in New Hampshire.  And a Liberty class ship was named after him in WWII.  He was well known for his oratory skills, intellectual prowess, and constitutional knowledge...you know what he wasn't known for?  A dictionary.

Talking about Webster's Dictionary - as in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, that is Noah Webster.  Noah was Daniel's cousin, but still completely different people.  Would you want to always be confused with your cousin?  Noah worked in copyright, education during which he created a popular spelling book, and finally created one of the earliest American dictionaries.  Noah wanted to standardize American speech and created American English - separate from British English.  He thought British English was often unnecessarily complex and he is the reason that we spell "center" instead of "centre", "honor" instead of "honour", and "theater" instead of "theatre"...among many other changes.

I just wanted to give a little credit where credit was due...and tell the footballer that he may want to study a little bit harder.