Whitney, William Dwight

Whitney, William Dwight, 1827–94, American Sanskrit scholar and lexicographer, b. Northampton, Mass. After studying in Germany, Whitney became professor of Sanskrit and of comparative philology at Yale. He was outstanding among American Orientalists and philologists and wrote A Sanskrit Grammar (1879) and Language and the Study of Language (1867). He was also brilliantly successful as editor of The Century Dictionary.

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