Originally Posted by
Arfur Dent
WHAT DO YOU MEAN - SOMBER??
Do you mean "Sombre"?? If so, take the trouble to, at least, spell your question correctly.
Innit? FFS.
Your beef is with Noah Webster. He died in 1843, but not before publishing his 70 thousand-word dictionary in 1828, learning 26 languages and, as a young anti-Royalist man that fervently supported the Revolution, sought to remove the French-spelling influence in English words since Frenchified English was still the form used by Georgian aristocracy. Given the choice between an Anglo-Saxon or phonetically-correct spelling version of a word vs a Frenchified/Norman-influenced version, he'd pick the former every time.
Bear in mind, in 1828 when Webster's was published there was no substantial or authoritative British dictionary of English words. The first (incomplete) parts of the Oxford English dictionary weren't published for another half-century, in 1885, and the first complete, bound version of the Oxford English not published until 1928, 100 years after Webster's.
In addition to being an anti-Royalist supporter of the Revolution on a first name basis with the likes of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin (among others) plus obviously being very well-versed in languages, Noah Webster was also reportedly obsessive and kinda weird so if he were alive today you most likely wouldn't win an internet "SombER" vs. SombRE" debate with him since that was the very thing he dedicated his life to and wound him up even more than yourself.