The reason for the difference between Webster and Oxford is pretty simple if you do a little studying on the history of language documentation between the 18th

The reason for the difference between Webster and Oxford is pretty simple if you do a little studying on the history of language documentation between the 18th and 20th Centuries. Probably the most important, seminal dictionary was from Samuel Johnson. The two-volume Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1755. It was an incomplete catalogue, full of opinion and jokes (see the definition of "oats" at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Dictionary_of_the_English_Language#The_Text http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Dictionary_of_the_English_Lan...). But it was a big deal at the time, and very much in the same vein of Diderot's Encyclopedia -- a great philosophical idea born of the Enlightenment, but certainly incomplete and not necessarily easy to distribute. When Webster started in 1806, Samuel Johnson was the best precedent he had to work off of. So it served as a major influence for his format and approach. Webster's goal, of course, was to provide an adequate account of American English to provide additional national identity to a growing nation. The Oxford English Dictionary, on the other hand, had an entirely separate goal. They wanted an objective academic reference to fully catalogue the functional meaning, language of origin, and first documented use of each word. So what happened between 1805 and 1878, when James Murray met with the Oxford University Press to set the groundwork for what would become the OED? Well, over the 19th Century, comparative philology became a big deal academically. This coincided significantly with the increase of nationalist movements in Europe. As vulgar Bibles had established the linguistic boundaries of major mercantile polities between the 14th and 17th Centuries, a combination of historic and scientific research into those languages helped to formulate an intellectual sense of nationality for different states during this time. In other words, the political situation in Europe created a market for a more objective, historical tool for cataloguing language, and not a companion for generating flowery prose. And you can see that as this happened about 70 years after Webster started, the emphasis on science over editorial had amplified over time, as scientific academies and universities increased their influence in their respective nation states. So to say that something like the OED, which has an amazing history (really, look up The Professor and the Madman), is devoid of soul just because it adequately fulfills its historical, scientific, and political purposes is nothing short of melodramatic. I actually think it's a good thing dictionaries don't editorialize too much. Each speaker already injects bias into each definition they write simply based on their local dialect and how they individually evaluate word meaning. Why make this bias worse by letting them crack wise when you're just trying to look up a simple word?