Archive:William Dwight Whitney (1827-1894)
Archives > Archive:Biographies > William Dwight Whitney (1827-1894)
The linguist William Dwight Whitney, b. Northampton, Mass., Feb. 9, 1827, d. June 7, 1894, is remembered for his two books, Language and the Study of Language (1867) and The Life and Growth of Language (1875). After studying in Germany he became professor of Sanskrit (1854), then of Sanskrit and comparative philology (1869), at Yale. He also compiled a Sanskrit Grammar (1879), worked on the 1864 edition of Webster's Dictionary, and edited the 6-volume Century Dictionary (1889-91).
--David Yerkes
William Dwight Whitney (1827-1894), a philologist and lexicographer, edited the Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia (1889-1891). [The American Heritager Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition]
From The Free Dictionary:
William Dwight Whitney (1827-1894) was an American grammarian and lexicographer who edited The Century Dictionary.
Born in Northampton, Massachusetts, he was the brother of Josiah Whitney. He was a graduate of both Williams College and Yale. He was an expert on Sanskrit and wrote grammars of French, English, and German. He edited the first edition of the respected Century Dictionary, which appeared from 1889 to 1891.
His ancestry: William Dwight8 WHITNEY (Josiah Dwight7, Abel6 Jr., Aaron5, Moses4, Moses3, Richard2, John1).
Copyright © 1999, 2006, The Whitney Research Group
