Short Stuff: Is It Theater or Theatre?

Have you ever noticed sometimes theaters – we mean, theatres – oh, forget it – places where you see movies or plays – are sometimes spelled two different ways? You can thank Noah Webster, author of the first American dictionary, for that.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck
and this is short stuff. Uh. And the one where
we get into explaining why some places you go to
see a movie or a play or spelled theater th
h E a t r E, and others are spelled
theater th h e a t e r and has

(00:26):
nothing to do with one being futuristic or anything like that.
And I love this because like when we go on
live tour, Chuck, it's almost invariably theater, but um, there
every once in a while you run up against the
place of venue that spells it theater with the E
er instead of R e um, and it's it's mind boggling,

(00:49):
it's it's it's probably the worst thing that happens on
tours that is having to deal with the differentiation between
those two. Yeah, it's funny at the head of feeling
you were going to mention that, because when we do
our our tour website there through through our old peals
at squarespace, Um, I always have to go back and
double check, and you're right, it usually is r E

(01:12):
it seems like. And I like the way that looks
on paper and on a billboard. Yeah, it looks very regal.
It reminds you of like rich, yeah, rich, like umu
red deep red velvet curtains and things like that. It's
like an Evening with Josh and Chuck, not just Josh
and Chuck comes to Josh and Chuck. If you one

(01:32):
who cares, you know, that's the E R version. The
R E version is like you said, in the Evening
with Josh and Chuck. That's right. Uh. So this all
came about from one man and his name was Noah Webster.
And at first I was thinking, wait a minute, did
mel Gibson play him in a movie? But I looked

(01:53):
it up and that was the guy who was writing
the Oxford English Dictionary. Not know a Webster who wrote
Webster's Dictionary? What book was that? A movie? Was that
The Man with Two Faces? No, it was, uh the
Professor and the Madman. I think I have never heard
of that. Okay, So I have, so I've heard the

(02:13):
story before that there there was a dictionary out there.
I thought it was the American English Dictionary, not not
the Oxford one. That like, there was a guy who
um was in an asylum for decades and contributed like
significantly to that dictionary, Right, that's the one. Yeah, I
haven't seen it, but I've heard I've heard good things
I didn't know was in it. Yeah, the famous anti Semite. Right.

(02:36):
So um, we're talking instaid about the other dictionary, not
the Oxford English Dictionary, the American English Dictionary created by
Noah Webster, who turns out to have been a bit
of a Polly math back in the eighteenth century. Cool dude,
from what I understand, Yeah, he seems like a quite
the renaissance man. He was born in Connecticut in seventeen

(02:58):
fifty eight, and after the Revolutionary War started in seventeen
seventy five, he was in college at Yale. War ends
he's uh in a militia, like a Patriot militia, graduates
and then becomes a teacher and then an attorney, and
then started to say, your articles of Confederation or garbage

(03:21):
in the way they're they're laid out, and it would
be much better if you did these things. Yeah. I
couldn't find what he was um credited with as far
as that goes, although I did see um some free
speech stuff. He may have been a big advocate of
free speech. Well, he was a member of Anti Slavery Society.
So he was a founder of the Connecticut Society for

(03:43):
the Abolition of Slavery. Yeah, so that tracks. And he
also helped found Amherst College in Massachusetts. But he's known
as a dictionary guy. Yeah. And he had this whole
thing where he felt like America needed to come into
its own intellectually or celebrate its culture more intellectually, and

(04:05):
that a good way to do that was to kind
of separate itself, um, education wise from the old British
system in the old British books and used brand new, um,
beautiful American books. Uh. And he there weren't any at
the time, so he said about creating one himself. He
found out like, actually, little American school kids are learning

(04:26):
from the old British books, and he was very upset
about that. So he said, you know what, I'm going
to create something different. Yeah. And pre dictionary, which we'll
get to after the break, he wrote something called the
American Spelling Book, um, which was also referred to as
the Blue Backed Speller. I guess at a blue cover
on the back is the only I can think of,

(04:47):
or it was referring to a character who had a
blue back in the book, maybe so, but it was
a big success. It's sold about a hundred million copies
by three which is just astounding. Uh. And we know
now because we have a book that is not sold
a hundred million copies. No, no, chuck, it was a
hundred million copies by three years. That's really astounding. And

(05:10):
it's still in print today. But it helps standardize American
English for teachers. And then he thought, this is great,
but what I really want to do is write a dictionary.
And we're gonna take a little break and tell you
about that result right after this. Sorry geh okay. So uh,

(05:56):
Noah Webster is riding high on his blue backed speller
in this excess of it, and he's he's done something
he wanted to do, which was, um, help d British
eyes American school kids learning. That was a good, good
first start. But then he said, you know, yes, I
believe the children are future. Teach them well and let
them leave the way, etcetera. But I also think that

(06:19):
we need to get to the adults as well. We
need to just basically create a tome, a text that
is the definitive guide to American English. Because everybody's running
around here saying things a little differently, but we're still
spelling them the British way, and that has to end. Say,
I know, ah, Webster, that's right. Uh. And it ended

(06:41):
up being that seventy thousand word dictionary of the American Dictionary.
I'm sorry, And American Dictionary of the English Language is
the full title. And he said, you know the word color,
it doesn't need that. You you don't hear it. We're
wasting inc drop it. Uh. Plow you want to plow
a field, just go out in p l O W

(07:03):
that field. Don't p l O U g h that
field because that's a waste of time. Right. What you
want to do is go hit it with the W
the p l O W and um. I'm very grateful
to him that we we have words like draft spelled
with n F rather than a U g H or
you know, plow spelled the right way um, and color

(07:26):
without a U or honor without a U. It all
makes sense. And I guess it had to do with um.
The like I said, the way that people were pronouncing
words in America. We're still saying the same word, but
we were we were saying it slightly differently, So it
made sense to kind of alter the spelling. Um some
words he went after. They did not stick, though, did

(07:47):
they chuck? Yeah, it looks so funny on paper. I
wish they would have stuck. Because he proposed spelling tongue
t u n g, which for some reason just looks
inly dirtier. It looks it's sexual for some reason to
me and women, w O M e N he proposed

(08:09):
should be spelled w I M And I'm sorry w
I M M E N women. Yeah, which sends derogatory
almost like sounds dirty women, sounds like who cares kind
of spelling, you know what I'm saying. So I'm glad
that those two stayed the same. Yeah, and it just
looks very strange. Of course, had they made those changes,

(08:32):
we would look at tongue t o in g u
e and think that looks very like draft d r
a U g h T. We would think that looks
weird because it's just what you know growing up. But
theater is what we're here to talk about. And theater
was one of those uh I think pre Webster it
was always are in that right, Yes, that was There

(08:55):
was no other way to spell theater except t h
E a T R E, and Webster came along and said,
nuts to that. Yeah, swap them out, but it's this
is what an example of one that kind of half took.
There is no correct way you can use either one.
There is a notion within the world of theater that

(09:16):
if you're talking about the world of theater, you'd say,
are you spell it with an R E? But you
actually perform at a theater with an E R And
I think I kind of knew that. But that's not
even you know, the hard and fast rule, which I mean,
that makes sense to me, But I don't think, Chuck,
I've ever encountered anybody who actually, like any any normal person,

(09:38):
um like just walking around that believe that or that
held that that viewpoint of view. No, I mean, I
think I've heard that. Like I said, theater with an
R E might refer to the industry of putting on
plays and shows, but I've never seen anyone, right, you know,
in the theater. We perform at a theater and then

(09:58):
spell that to different ways. Yeah, I just I've never
encountered it before. But it does make sense, and apparently
some people do kind of see see the world like that.
But for the rest of us, we're just gonna stay
muddled and confused till the end of time, swapping out
R E and E R for theater because in the end,
it doesn't really matter. Whoever you're talking to is gonna

(10:18):
know what you're talking about. And if you're a prescriptivist,
no descriptivists, that's that's language, that's what counts. That's right.
And I think the end result is hopefully sometime next
fall and winter you might be able to see, uh,
spend an evening with Josh and Chuck at a theatra,
right or if um, you're just kind of feeling super

(10:42):
American at a theater. Okay, Well, since we said theater
two different ways, I think everybody it's clear that this
is the end of short stuff, and short stuff says audios.
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