Lexigraphy is an art–it tracks language as it stands now–at the date of publication. Fortunately or not, language changes. There probably are some mistakes in early dictionaries. But more than mistakes, there are bound to be omissions–words and usages which are regional which fade out without ever having been tracked, or develop into formal language with the origin unknown. There would be no reason to focus on Webster. Robert Cawdrey wrote an English dictionary in 1604, which certainly predates Webster. And poor Webster has been taken in vain by hundreds of publishers churning out their own badly researched dictionaries under Webster’s name.

Look under the title page of any dollar store or cheap grocery store Webster dictionaries and you’re liable to find ANY publisher and no real connection to Webster.

www.gutenberg.org has a number of early dictionaries which are old and fascinating and predate “webster”

So why don’t you look up the history of Daniel Webster who put the dictionary together.

There were other dictionaries. and the language has rules of English and grammatical usuages that he didn’t invent.

Sorry, the lexicographer (the person who wrote the dictionary) was Noah, not Daniel. Daniel was a lawyer (The Devil and Daniel Webster), orator, statesman and politician.