Yet I have no hesitation in saying that the English language is founded on a broader base [than the French], native and adopted, and capable, with the like freedom of employing its materials, of becoming superior to that in copiousness and euphony. Not indeed by holding fast to Johnson's Dictionary; not by raising a hue and cry against every word he has not licensed; but by encouraging and welcoming new compositions of its elements.
—Thomas Jefferson, American politician, statesman, and writer, letter to John Waldo, 1813