Comment by MithrilTuxedo

Interestingly, you can trace “American” English becoming its own thing [1] to the publication of the first Webster dictionary that made a conscious effort to simplify spelling. American and British dialects have been diverging ever since (although British has been becoming more American since the turn of the millennium).

[1] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figures?id=10.1371...

Now there's a damn dense joke, bravo

I disagree. Dictionaries are mostly descriptive as opposed to prescriptive. They wouldn’t be particularly useful if they weren’t.

That being said, I have seen people weaponize dictionary definitions if that’s what you were referring to.