Colonial Boston Vocabulary: "improved"

To start off a little series of entries about the language of Revolutionary Boston, I'll quote a letter from one of the town's departed sons, Benjamin Franklin, to future lexicographer Noah Webster on 26 Dec 1789.

Webster was just starting his career in printing and publishing, and had contacted the older man about his early efforts to regularize American style. Franklin noted changes in how people spoke, wrote, and set type, differences between England and America and differences between the new U.S. of A. and the culture he remembered from his youth. From Philadelphia he wrote:

I cannot but applaud your Zeal for preserving the Purity of our Language, both in its Expressions and Pronunciation, and in correcting the popular Errors several of our States are continually falling into with respect to both. Give me leave to mention some of them, though possibly they may have already occurred to you. I wish, however, in some future Publication of yours, you would set a discountenancing Mark upon them.

The first I remember is the word improved. When I left New England, in the year [17]23, this Word had never been used among us, as far as I know, but in the sense of ameliorated or made better, except once in a very old Book of Dr. [Increase] Mather’s, entitled Remarkable Providences. As that eminent Man wrote a very obscure Hand, I remember that when I read that Word in his Book, used instead of the Word imployed, I conjectured that it was an Error of the Printer, who had mistaken a too short l in the Writing for an r, and a y with too short a Tail for a v; whereby imployed was converted into improved.

But when I returned to Boston, in 1733, I found this Change had obtained Favour, and was then become common; for I met with it often in perusing the Newspapers, where it frequently made an Appearance rather ridiculous. Such, for Instance, as the Advertisement of a Country-House to be sold, which has been many years improved as a Tavern; and, in the Character of a deceased Country Gentleman, that he had been for more than 30 Years improved as a Justice-of-Peace.

This use of the Word improved is peculiar to New England, and not to be met with among any other Speakers of English, either on this or the other Side of the Water.

Other American neologisms or new usages that Franklin had noted after returning from France were the verbs notice, advocate, and progress. He disliked how Printers were no longer using capital Letters to designate each Noun in a Sentence. And he thought questions should begin with an upside-down question mark, as in Spanish, so readers would know how to inflect the words. ¿Should we have done that in 1789?