Standardized* /s Edit: I thought you were joking and that the answer was more like printing presses and a lack of an official "standard English" in the 1700s/

Standardized* /s Edit: I thought you were joking and that the answer was more like printing presses and a lack of an official "standard English" in the 1700s/1800s, but it turns out the answer really was closer to what you said. Noah Webster deliberately decided to make American English diverge from British English when he wrote his dictionary.