Some Important Info; May Not Be Everywhere Because the U.S. Gov’t Is Observing the Epstein Shutdown

Lead in protein powders. What you need to know by Katelyn Jetelina

Happy Monday from Atlanta! I just tried to convince thousands at a public health conference that it’s time to reimagine systems—not just defend the status quo. I’m happy to report that tomatoes weren’t thrown my way. This is my fourth state in five days, and the highlight is actually seeing the seasons change and meeting a lot of you in person. I couldn’t be more excited to see my girls (and survive another round of the KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack).

*Top: Plenary stage with Mike Osterholm; From the bottom left: Met YLE reader Krisandra Allen at the conference. Fall leaves in Idaho. My daughter welcoming me home at the airport.*

This week’s Dose runs the gamut: from what’s really going on with lead in protein powders (and whether you should be worried), to a refreshing burst of leadership as 15 governors join forces to strengthen public health collaboration, to falsehoods swirling around mammograms. We’ll wrap with an infectious disease weather report and a quick note for dog owners on an FDA recall.

Let’s go!

Consumer Reports found lead in protein powders. How bad is it?

Last week, Consumer Reports released an analysis revealing elevated lead levels in several popular protein powders and shakes. Google searches for “lead in protein powder” spiked 300%, and influencers lit up social media. Depending on which news source you read, it was either a five-alarm fire or no big deal.

So what’s actually going on? Lead is everywhere—soil, food, water, and air. Thankfully, overall exposure has dropped dramatically since the 1970s, and modern lab tests can now detect vanishingly small amounts (down to parts per billion). But detection does not necessarily equal danger.

How bad is bad? That’s where things get tricky because not everyone agrees:

California limit: 0.5 mcg/day. This number comes from a very conservative calculation: regulators took the “no observable effect” level for reproductive harm for inhaled lead exposure in workplaces and divided it by 1,000. Many experts argue that this threshold is unrealistic. It’s also not linked to adverse health outcomes.
FDA’s limit: 2.2 mcg/day for kids, 8.8 mcg/day during pregnancy, and 12.5 mcg/day for other adults based on blood lead levels, toxicology data, and a built-in 10x safety factor.
European Union limit: Allows up to 3 mg/kg (3 ppm) in food supplements—roughly 90 mcg per 30-gram scoop of protein powder. In this case, the FDA is far more cautious than Europe (and that’s not usually how things go).

Back to the report: of the 23 protein supplements they tested, two-thirds exceeded “Level of Concern.” One brand (Naked Nutrition Vegan Mass Gainer) hit nearly 16 times the limit. But because Consumer Reports used California’s exceptionally strict benchmark, those numbers sound scarier than they really are.

The average American already gets 5.3 mcg of lead daily from food and the environment. That’s another reason California’s cutoff doesn’t make much sense. Still, some products identified in the report could push intake close to the pregnancy (8.8 mcg) or adult (12.5 mcg) daily thresholds.

What this means for you: Don’t worry too much. While the FDA continues to reduce lead exposure through programs like Closer to Zero and the Total Diet Study (that is, if the funding continues), there are several things we can do in our own homes, especially for parents of kids and during pregnancy.

Check to see if your protein supplement (or any supplement, really) has third-party testing for heavy metals (like USP or Informed Sport).
Advocate for more pre-market regulatory oversight in the supplement industry (which has very little, if any at all) by writing to your local representative.
Eat a diet that includes a variety of nutrient-dense foods, which helps limit exposure to specific food sources and ensures we get an array of protective nutrients.
Prioritize getting your protein from whole food sources.

Big thanks to YLE’s Megan Maisano—Registered Dietitian Nutritionist— for writing this section.

Fourteen states and Guam join forces to launch Governors’ Public Health Alliance

Governors from 14 states and Guam announced the creation of the bipartisan Governors’ Public Health Alliance, which is a new effort to strengthen coordination and collaboration across state lines.

Why do we need this? In the U.S., authority over health rests with the states, not the federal government. Health (encompassing both health care and public health) is not only the highest budget item for a state but also the primary reason for state bankruptcy. In other words, governors hold enormous power over your health.

Today, though, federal support is shifting fast, funding is drying up, and states are being forced to get creative. States must decide whether to maintain their public health departments (due to funding cuts), how to continue purchasing vaccines (if the federal government stops recommending them), whether to negotiate drug prices (like insulin), and more. We saw a similar challenge during the pandemic with bulk purchasing of PPE.

In general, the more coordinating, collaborating, and innovative thinking, the better.

However, I’m growing increasingly concerned about the partisan gaps in public health. Although some Republicans are on the advisory board and the initiative was framed as bipartisan, no Republican-led states have joined. This worries me for my friends in red states, like Texas, but it also has implications for everyone, as diseases don’t care about borders.

What this means for you: If your state is included, you can rest assured your governor is talking to others, which is a helpful step toward innovative solutions. You could argue it was needed before this moment, too. Public health has been siloed for far too long.

Mammograms save lives. They’ve been wrongly targeted.

Happy Breast Cancer Awareness month! Unfortunately, this month has driven some influencers to post false claims about the harms of mammograms. So let’s clear this up.

Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in women in the U.S., and accounts for 1 in 3 new cancers among women each year. (It affects men too, just at lower rates.) There is strong scientific consensus in support of routine mammograms to prevent breast cancer and detect it early:

Randomized trials show that mammograms reduce the risk of death from breast cancer by 12-20%, depending on age. For every 1,000 mammograms, one death is prevented.
Regular mammograms starting at age 40 are recommended for everyone, but may have even greater benefit for Black women, who are 40% more likely to die from breast cancer than white women and more likely to have aggressive cancers, younger.

There’s some critical nuance here:

With each mammogram, breast tissue is exposed to a small amount of ionizing radiation. But! We’re exposed to this type of radiation every day in our natural environment. At high doses, radiation exposure can change DNA and cause harm, but the amount of radiation exposure during a mammogram is about the same as flying from California to New York.
Organizations disagree on whether mammograms every year or every other year are optimal. Screening recommendations are based on evaluating science to maximize benefit (lives saved) while reducing patient worry, unnecessary costs, and diagnosing and treating cancers and pre-cancers that ultimately wouldn’t cause health problems—also called “overdiagnosis.” This is a balancing act.
Mammograms are just one tool for detecting cancer, and women with dense breasts or high risk for cancer (e.g., family history, known genetic predispositions, or other key risk factors) may benefit from additional screening, such as through an MRI.

What this means for you: The benefits of mammograms far outweigh the risks. The U.S. Preventive Task Force, the American College of Radiology, the American Society of Breast Surgeons, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommend routine mammograms starting at age 40 for women at average risk of breast cancer. If you have risk factors for breast cancer, dense breasts, or you’re 75 or older, talk to your doctor about your screening goals and plan. Don’t know your risk? Here’s one risk assessment tool.

For more, see YLE’s deep dive on breast cancer screening recommendations.

Infectious disease “weather report”

In the U.S., flu and RSV are still quiet. CDC data is still on pause because of the government shutdown, so we’re continuing to reference PopHive data. RSV activity is still low but growing in southern states, like Louisiana and Texas.

*RSV Activity in the U.S. Figure from PopHIVE*

However, Covid-19 is having a moment in the U.K., with hospitalizations increasing exponentially after a 10-month lull. This isn’t driven by a dramatic variant, but rather by a lack of immunity building up over time. Flu might also be increasing, which suggests it’s coming soon (as expected) for the U.S.

*Figure from Dr. Christina Pagel’s Substack.*

Dog owners, check your pup’s food

The FDA recalled Raw Bistro frozen beef dog food for possible Salmonella contamination. The recalled products were sold directly to consumers and to select distributors between Sept. 1 and Sept. 17 in California, Colorado, Illinois, and Minnesota.

Salmonella can make dogs sick, just like humans. Contaminated food can cause illness days later in dogs. And dog owners can get sick from handling contaminated food or dog bowls.

What this means for you: Check the lot numbers on your dog’s food, and toss it if they are included in the FDA recall notice. Sanitize bowls if they held contaminated food, wash your hands, and watch for warning signs in your dog: lethargy, vomiting, diarrhea, and loss of appetite. If you notice these signs, take your pet to the vet.

That’s it for this week! Share your fall leave pics in the comments below so that I can continue to live vicariously through you.

Love, YLE

Your Local Epidemiologist (YLE) is founded and operated by Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, MPH PhD—an epidemiologist, wife, and mom of two little girls. YLE is a public health newsletter that reaches over 400,000 people in more than 132 countries, with one goal: to translate the ever-evolving public health science so that people are well-equipped to make evidence-based decisions. This newsletter is free to everyone, thanks to the generous support of fellow YLE community members. To support the effort, subscribe or upgrade below:

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Ypsilanti, named for a Greek Freedom Fighter against Tyranny, Rallies against Trump on “No Kings” Day

Juan Cole 10/19/2025

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – In the 1820s Greece waged a successful war of independence against an authoritarian king, the Ottoman Emperor Mahmoud II. The American public, enthralled with this saga of a quest for liberty, idolized the revolutionaries, who were led for a few years by Demetrios Ypsilantis. They took his name for the name of their town, Ypsilanti. The people here therefore have a very long history of despising tyrants, and they demonstrated it again on Saturday.

Some 3,500 demonstrators came out for a march against Trump policies on No Kings Day, October 18 in Ypsilanti, Michigan, according to Lilly Kujawski. People chanted “What does democracy look like? This is what democracy looks like!” and “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Donald Trump has got to go.”

Ypsilanti is a majority white, predominantly Democratic town of about 20,000 residents in the southeast corner of the state, with several factories (including the Rawsonville Ford plant) and Eastern Michigan University, with its WEMU NPR jazz station.

As a blue collar town, it shows that the slight swing to Trump among working class families nationally did not happen everywhere. Trump’s workers often don’t have a high school degree or are evangelicals. In 2024, he “lost majorities of blue-collar blacks, Latinos, and non-evangelical whites,” according to Brookings. The roughly one quarter of the residents in the town who are of African-American heritage suffer from the openly racist discrimination of Trump’s minions.

Trump policies favoring the rich fat cats and harming blue collar workers hurt Ypsilanti residents. His tariffs will raise the cost of the things they buy. His attack on their health care will put up their doctor and hospital costs. For those between jobs, the cuts to SNAP, medicaid and other benefits hurt.

When Demetrios Ypsilantis mounted his rebellion against the Ottoman Empire, among his goals were a rule of law and a constitutional order. The Ottoman Empire was an absolute monarchy that in the 1820s had no constitution, no legislature, and the judges in which were Muslim clerics appointed by and paid by the state, so that they had no independence of the sultan.

The French political philosopher Montesquieu (d. 1755) had laid out the problem in his Spirit of the Laws, which deeply influenced the American Founding Fathers. He wrote,

“There would be an end of everything, were the same man or the same body, whether of the nobles or of the people, to exercise those three powers, that of enacting laws, that of executing the public resolutions, and of trying the causes of individuals.

Most kingdoms in Europe enjoy a moderate government because the prince who is invested with the two first powers leaves the third to his subjects. In Turkey, where these three powers are united in the Sultan’s person, the subjects groan under the most dreadful oppression.”

Alabama charter school keeps contract after removing rainbow murals, LGBTQ references

Even though the school was started as a LGBTQ+ safe space they had to remove anything affirming the LGBTQ+ people. The goal of the republican right is to erase LGBTQ+ people from the public society. They don’t want us seen, they do not want us talked about. They especially don’t want kids to understand they can be themselves if they are not straight or cis. They want kids to feel they must fit the mold of straight and cis only. If you feel differently you must hide it and live miserably to make the snowflake Christian nationalist right feel comfortable. This will backfire on them. Just as the LGBTQ+ overcame the full force of the right’s bigotry once we can do it again. We have moved far too toward equality to let them push us from society again. The young people will not accept it nor tolerate the regression of freedoms to make a few bigots feel comfortable with the world around them. They also know that intolerant maga driven my the cult of tRump won’t last forever. Hugs

“We have had rainbows in our building because we are affirming to all people, and at some point our mission statement included a segment that said ‘We are affirming to LGBTQ people,’ but we have taken that out.”

Before the vote Wednesday, she said the school painted over rainbow colors and designs and replaced maps with ones that had a “Gulf of America” label. They revised the logo and reviewed textbooks and other documents.

https://www.al.com/educationlab/2025/10/alabama-charter-school-keeps-contract-after-removing-rainbow-murals-lgbtq-references.html

Updated: Oct. 16, 2025, 9:04 a.m.

Published: Oct. 15, 2025, 7:07 p.m.

Magic City Acceptance Academy held its first graduation ceremony May 27, 2022, in Birmingham, Alabama. Trisha Powell Crain/AL.com

By

Rebecca Griesbach | rgriesbach@al.com

Months after its contract was threatened over a rainbow mural and a map labeling the Gulf of Mexico, an Alabama charter school will stay open.

The state charter commission voted Wednesday to renew Magic City Acceptance Academy’s contract, allowing the school to operate for five more years. The school and its leaders came under fire this spring for allegedly violating aspects of Alabama’s new anti-DEI law, which prohibits so-called “divisive concepts” and other diversity and inclusion programming in public schools and colleges.

“I’ll say the thing that we’re all thinking,” said Karen Musgrove, the school’s CEO, after being pressed by one commissioner to address the “monster in the room.”

“We have had rainbows in our building because we are affirming to all people, and at some point our mission statement included a segment that said ‘We are affirming to LGBTQ people,’ but we have taken that out.”

“We’re affirming to all people. We’re affirming to our Black students. We’re affirming to our Hispanic students. We’re affirming to our LGBTQ students, which are in every school in the state.”

Magic City Acceptance Academy opened in 2021 in an effort to provide a supportive learning environment for LGBTQ students and other at-risk populations. Students and staff say they built a welcoming community in the Birmingham-area school, despite a firestorm of political backlash over the years.

In a plea to commissioners, one parent said “everything changed” for her son after enrolling at MCAA. He stopped skipping class, vaping and fighting, and he’s now excelling in college-level courses.

“Renewing Magic City’s charter means continuing to change lives like my son’s,” she said. “It means giving more kids the chance to discover their potential and their purpose.”

After a brief debate, the commission ultimately renewed the charter – on the condition that it agreed to maintain “strict adherence throughout its shorter term to Alabama laws, specifically including, without limitation, Alabama Code 41190,” the state’s “divisive concepts” law. If it fails to comply, Magic City could be subject to sanctions, said Lane Knight, the commission’s lawyer.

“They’ve got the financial support, they’ve got a good program, they’ve got the leadership,” said commission member Charles Knight. “And again, we all agree that we’re trying to create environments where students are educated, and obviously they’re doing a good job of that.”

Recent changes

According to emails obtained by AL.com, school officials contacted the charter commission in early 2025, just days after 1819 News ran an article claiming the school was violating the law by hosting a “radical LGBTQ+ anti-America author” and promoting diversity, equity and inclusion in its handbook.

Musgrove reached out to the commission’s director, Logan Searcy, for advice on January 24. She sent Searcy changes to the school’s mission statement a week later.

Between February and March, 1819 published a handful of articles about the school. Republican lawmakers threatened its funding and called for a state investigation.

In early February, the commission paid the school another visit.

“The goal here is to report our diligence in monitoring the school to hopefully alleviate concerns at renewal time,” the commission’s financial specialist, Douglas Riley, wrote to Principal Patton Furman on Feb. 4. “I suspect you will see much more attention from the Commission this spring with that goal in mind. Please understand the spirit in which these efforts are intended, we want to identify and fix problems before they grow into something serious.”

He wrote to school leaders again after the visit: “Y’all are making some strong moves and I hope we can put the recent press behind us and have a smooth renewal process later this year.”

That same day, the commission sent the school a letter, noting that it had received “various reports” that the school’s curricula and programming violated the new law.

Searcy visited the school, along with commission member Cynthia McCarty, on Feb. 20, according to emails.

On March 6, Musgrove issued a lengthy response to the commission’s letter, claiming that leaders had already taken steps to make changes to decor and programming, and that they had not received any negative feedback after members’ visits to the school.

Before the vote Wednesday, she said the school painted over rainbow colors and designs and replaced maps with ones that had a “Gulf of America” label. They revised the logo and reviewed textbooks and other documents.

“We don’t see ourselves as being divisive,” she said. “Because we did exactly what was asked of us.”

A new outlook

It is rare for an Alabama charter school to close down after its initial contract is granted. If the commission has any concerns about a school’s viability, they may issue a shortened two- or three-year contract.

The commission originally suggested a three-year contract for Magic City, but voted to approve a standard five-year one after some pushback.

With the greenlight from the commission, school officials plan to start work immediately on a new building, which will feature a large theater, band room and expanded mental health resources.

It plans to eventually serve up to 500 students.

“We are going to make you proud,” Musgrove told the commission. “We’re doing amazing things, and we want you to be a part of that relationship.”

The commission also approved a five-year extension for LEAD Academy in Montgomery and a three-year extension for Breakthrough Academy in Perry County.

—————————————————————————————————————–

Rebecca Griesbach

Rebecca Griesbach is a data reporter at AL.com, covering education and other issues across the state. She joined the newsroom in 2021 as a founding member of the Alabama Education Lab and a Report for America… more

rgriesbach@al.com

My Boyfriend Founded Uncloseted Media. It’s What I Needed as a Kid

Growing up as someone who is different from the majority is difficult no matter the circumstances. For the LGBTQ+ it is horrific when just your very existence is called an abomination and you are equated with the worst being in history. Especially when your parents and your god are pushing the idea that you are a monster who can only be cured if you follow their god, their church doctrines, have their feelings about everything in your life. Hugs.

https://www.unclosetedmedia.com/p/my-boyfriend-founded-uncloseted-media

At 40 years old, I am still shedding an upbringing of religious trauma. But today, I feel free.

Sean Robinson

Oct 18, 2025

Photo courtesy of Sean.

A guest essay by Sean Robinson – Spencer’s boyfriend.

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When I was around 10 years old, I remember horsing around in the grass with my oldest brother. I asked him the meaning of homosexuality, a word that I had heard from my parents and from the New Order Amish and Mennonite communities I was surrounded by growing up in upstate New York and rural Virginia.

Sean and his dad Upstate New York. Photo courtesy of Sean.

While I wasn’t certain what the word meant, I knew it was bad and I was pretty sure it was me. So when my brother responded to my question by saying that homosexuality is “demonic,” I pushed those thoughts down.

A few years later, my dad told me that once someone becomes a homosexual, they will “want more and more and more” and it will lead to a sexual desire for “children, then animals, then blood.”

Sean and his dad through the years. Photos courtesy of Sean.

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Hearing these ideas persistently and consistently made me feel like there was this horrible thing inside of me that I just hated. I had learned that it was akin to being a pedophile, and that’s how I felt about myself.

These feelings created so much shame and fear but most of all a level of embarrassment that was so intense that I vowed to myself I would take my secret to the grave.

Sean and his parents. Photo courtesy of Sean.

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But I didn’t. When I met just one gay person at Danville Community College, I felt a small but significant rumbling of hope. This encounter gave me the courage to leave. So at 17, I told my parents I was moving to New York City to pursue the performing arts.

While I was semi-interested in being on screen, I saw NYC as a symbol of a new life where I could be my authentic self. A few months after I moved, I came out to my mom over the phone, who later told me—through a puddle of tears—that I might as well have died in a car accident.

I had to dig to make a life for myself with few people in my corner. I utilized NYC social programs like SNAP benefits, free health care and low-income housing. These services gave me the bootstraps I needed to pull myself up.

The years of familial and community rejection and efforts to change me through conversion therapy took more than two decades of treatment, medication and supportive friendships to help me find a formula where today—at 40 years old—I can manage my depression, anxiety, tics (that were at one point debilitating), no-contact relationship with my parents and low self-esteem.

I am so grateful to the heroes who helped me through these years: Paul Warner, Jerry Meadors and countless others. You lifted me up, taught me the ropes, allowed me to couch surf and showered me with love.

Sean in his teens. Photo courtesy of Sean.

Fighting the demons of my past, including years of religious trauma and physical abuse disguised as “corporal punishment,” is something I’d wish on nobody. When I read Uncloseted stories that discuss how nearly 40% of LGBTQ kids seriously considered suicide in the last year, my heart breaks because I know that could have been me if my path had veered a degree in a different direction.

Sean with Spencer and his psychiatric service dog Carson. Photo courtesy of Sean.

Flash forward 20 years and I’m sitting next to Spencer, who’s helping shine a spotlight on the very thing I tried to suppress in the darkness of my mind. I am now a video editor at MTV, working on RuPaul’s Drag Race, the groundbreaking television show that has helped so many queer kids across America feel seen and feel safe—something every child deserves.

I’ve always been resilient and tough.

But finally, I feel calm and free.

Response from Sean’s Dad:

In a text message to Uncloseted Media, Sean’s dad, Chris Robinson, wrote that he remembers saying that “when the moral fabric of societies begin to decay it usually starts with the sin of not acknowledging Almighty God, the Giver and Sustainer of life. [If] that condition of man continues then more sin comes [including] adultery, fornication and general unfaithfulness. The next level is men allowing women and children to rule. This would have been the feminist movement of the 60’s. Next comes homosexuality then bestiality and finishing up with child and adult sacrifice and much shedding of blood. This progression is recorded in Genesis and through the Chronicles and Kings in the Bible.”

In response to Sean’s references to corporal punishment, his dad wrote that he remembers being “shocked at [Sean’s] fearless defiance to [his] authority … as being the one responsible for order in the home” and that he would punish him—after multiple verbal warnings for misbehavior—by giving him “4 or 5 good licks with the switch and [would then] give him a hug and prayer and hope he got the message.” His dad added that he and Sean had many good times too and that he “still shed[s] a tear at times in memory of [his] little Seany.”

Response from Sean’s Mom:

In a text message to Uncloseted Media, Sean’s mom, Michelle Robinson, does not remember telling Sean after he came out that he might as well have died in a car accident. “My mind is blank for anything specific,” she wrote.

In response to Sean’s reference to corporal punishment, his mom says that out of the hundred times where corporal punishment was administered correctly through biblical spanking done with love, there were “a handful of times when his father admits he acted more in anger as [an] immediate reaction because of Sean’s behavior and he realizes he should’ve done that differently [and that his dad] always immediately apologized and they always had special time together and they worked through that.”

“We believed in honoring God with our life. We were not perfect but our heart was to please God,” she wrote, adding that Sean was treated with love as a child and through adulthood.

Sean’s brother did not respond to Uncloseted Media’s request for comment.

If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation through our fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:

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Well, I Didn’t Get My Post Newsletter Until Yesterday. Belated National Dictionary Day:

In a Word: National Dictionary Day

Why dictionary lovers celebrate Noah Webster’s birthday.

Andy Hollandbeck

Senior managing editor and logophile Andy Hollandbeck reveals the sometimes surprising roots of common English words and phrases. Remember: Etymology tells us where a word comes from, but not what it means today.

On October 16, 1758, Noah Webster and his wife Mercy Steel Webster welcomed a new son into their lives. They named him after his father. Noah Sr. was a farmer and weaver, and Mercy was a homemaker, and by all outward appearances, they lived a rather normal life in the West Division of Hartford — what would become West Hartford, Connecticut.

Though the elder Webster had never attended college himself, he placed great value on education, so from an early age, Mercy taught the younger Noah what she could of spelling, mathematics, music, and other subjects. At age 6, he began attending a one-room schoolhouse; later in life, he described his untrained teachers there as the “dregs of humanity.”

Regardless, Noah took to learning like a fish to water, eventually outgrowing the educational opportunities of his hometown. When he was 16, Noah Sr. mortgaged the family farm so that they could afford to send the younger Noah to Yale University to continue his studies; he graduated four years later in 1778, in the midst of the American Revolution.

After Yale, Noah wanted to study law, but his family couldn’t afford it. Remembering the deficiencies and horrors of his grade school days, he recognized that education might be a better place to make his mark. So he became a teacher.

Most of the books used in American classrooms at the time still came from England — some even included pledges to King George. There was also the matter of patriotism. There was a scarcity of American textbooks for American children, and Noah Webster decided he could help.

So in 1783, he published his own textbook, A Grammatical Institute of the English Language. Because it was printed with blue covers, it was known colloquially as the Blue-Backed Speller, and it became one of the most popular American books of the late 18th century, helping teach children to read, spell, and pronounce words.

But the words themselves were still anchored in Great Britain, and the lexicography coming out of England didn’t encompass the American experience. This realization set Webster on a course that would change the language. In 1801, he began collecting words and their definitions with the aim of creating an American dictionary.

His first edition, published in 1806, was called A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language, and it contained the spellings and brief definitions of 37,000 English words, including thousands of new words that originated on the left side of the Atlantic, words like skunk and raccoon and moccasin (entered as “Moccason or Moggason”).

Webster wasn’t the first to refer to his word hoard as a dictionary. That word had been used in English to describe a reference work at least since the early 16th century, including in the titles of Henry Cockeram’s The English Dictionarie (1623), Thomas Blount’s Glossographia; or, a dictionary interpreting the hard words of whatsoever language, now used in our refined English tongue (1656), Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language (1755), and Francis Grove’s A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1788).

The word was apparently coined by John of Garland, a 13th-century English teacher, from the Latin dictio “speech, word.” There are quite a few dict words in English from the same source, such as edict (“to speak out”), contradict (“to speak against”), and benediction (“to speak well”). The adjectival form of dictio is dictionarius, meaning “of words.” In Medieval Latin, a book containing an ordered list of words was called a dictionarium (which might be a shortening of dictionarius liber), whence the English dictionary sprang.

Compendious is an interesting word. It traces to the Latin preposition com “with, together” and pendere “to hang, to weigh.” Compendium is literally “that which is weighed together,” but in Latin it meant “a shortening, a shortcut.” A compendium is a concise summary of a larger work or, more generally, a compilation of related things. The adjective compendious, then, was chosen to indicate Webster’s attempt to be both comprehensive but also brief.

And brief is a good word to describe the entries in Webster’s Compendious Dictionary, especially when compared with all the information found in dictionary entries today. The vast majority of entries are a single line on pages arranged in two columns. And while they are technically accurate definitions, they don’t always help the reader understand how to use the word. For example:

Definite, n. a thing defined or explained

Sailing, n. the act or art of sailing

Stoic, n. a philosopher of the sect of Zeno

Webster continued to collect, define, and compile words, and in 1828, at the age of 70, he published what is considered his magnum opus: An American Dictionary of the English Language, containing definitions for about 70,000 words. That the word American replaced Compendious in the title says a lot about his motivations. He was working toward a new edition when he died in 1843.

Webster famously simplified (corrected is the word he used) the common spellings of some entries based primarily on pronunciation, creating the separation between British English and American English that exists today. For example, his dictionary dropped the u from words like colour and honour. He also favored -ize over -ise in words like crystalize and emphasize, though he wasn’t wholly consistent.

Though Webster’s dictionary was widely popular in the United States, not everything he included was universally welcomed or adopted. Some of his spelling reforms simply didn’t take: For instance, he entered the word bedclothes into his dictionary as bedcloaths, sleigh as sley, and tongue as tung. He also included words that some found objectionable. In the December 27, 1828, issue of The Saturday Evening Post can be found this bit of snark:

Webster’s Dictionary has been issued from the press of Mr. Converse, the publisher. It is contained in two large quarto volumes, and is executed in a manner highly creditable to the press of our country. He introduces into his new dictionary as legitimate, the word lengthy. We should like to know whether his reasons for so doing are breadthy and strengthy.

Regardless of the criticisms, Webster’s lexical toils set the foundation for American dictionary scholarship that extends into modern times; the dictionaries of Merriam-Webster are the direct descendants of Noah Webster’s An American Dictionary of the English Language.

And that’s why October 16 — the anniversary of Noah Webster’s birth — is today celebrated by lexicographers, linguists, and logophiles as National Dictionary Day.