I must take issue with the claim that Noah Webster's dictionary somehow "dropped the u in words such as honour ...."

I don't know about the alteration to center etc but the Latinate spelling of honor, labor, valor etc was well established in England alongside the Norman French spelling which used the u, long before Webster's dictionary.

In the Preface to his 1755 work, Samuel Johnson clearly stated that he made an arbitrary decision to go with the Norman/French spelling and was so consistent he even spelt "errour, authour, controul, tenour" etc. The early settlers in Australia brought both forms of spelling with them and the Latinate version survives today in the spelling of the Australian Labor Party and the town of Victor Harbor in South Australia.

The later grammarians who infested our shores mainly came from England and gradually imposed the Johnson spelling although not as totally as he would have had it.

Certainly, the Americans did not invent the spelling of labor, honor, valor
etc.

Joe Goerke
Australia


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