First, a brief lesson in historical linguistics. Language families arose at some point in the past from what linguists call proto-languages, which is a term that refers to a language that is reconstructed rather than one that is attested. There is debate over whether language families all derive back to a single proto-language or if several proto-languages developed independently. In either case, as the group forming the speakers of a proto-language grows over time, it eventually splits into two or more separate groups whose language started out the same and then over time became mutually unintelligible. Those two “child” languages are related in the family tree of languages. The child languages can then grow and split as well. In the history of English, there have been several splits, but two are significant: first, the proto-Indo-European language split into various languages forming the subfamilies of Indo-European, such as the Germanic languages (proto-Germanic) and the Romance languages (Latin). The Germanic languages also split, eventually resulting in English being a separate language from the other Germanic languages, such as German, Swedish, and Dutch.
A word becomes part of a language in two ways: (1) it inherits them from ancestor languages; (2) they borrow them from contemporary foreign languages. For example, the English word brother derives in a direct lineage back through proto-Germanic to the proto-Indo-European root *bʰréh₂tēr. This is an inherited word. The other way a word enters a language is to be borrowed from a contemporary foreign language. This is like the English word croissant which was borrowed from the French word croissant. That is, when the word croissant became a part of English, it was copied from people who were speaking a foreign language—French. Even though French and English are related—both being Indo-European languages—the word croissant was borrowed from French because the word entered English after French speakers and English speakers split apart long enough for their languages to be mutually unintelligible.
Now, French also has a word for brother that derives from the proto-Indo-European root *bʰréh₂tēr: that French word is frère. This is where the word akin comes in. The English word brother is akin to the French word frère because both languages inherited those words from their ancestor languages, and they both ultimately derive from the same root in their closest common ancestor language, proto-Indo-European.
So, when a dictionary etymology says “word A in language L1 is akin to word B in language L2”, that means that neither word A nor word B were borrowed into their respective language and both word A and word B derive from the same root word in L1 and L2’s common ancestor language. That is, when Merriam-Webster say about salt that it is “akin to Old High German salz salt, Lithuanian saldus sweet, Latin sal salt, Greek hals salt, sea” they mean that the English word salt and those other words from related languages all come from the same root in their common ancestor language, proto-Indo-European.
A couple of other terms you might find:
- derivative: a derivative is a word that is derived from a root word. Both brother and frère are derivates of *bʰréh₂tēr.
- reflex: a reflex is a sound in a descendent language that corresponds to a sound in the ancestor language. For example, the proto-Indo-European sound /bʰ/ has the reflex sound /b/ in English and /f/ in French, which is why the English derivative is brother and the French derivative is frère. Similarly, the proto-Indo-European root *bʰudʰ-no- has derivative bottom in English and fond in French, and *bʰerǵʰ- meaning “fort” has derivatives burg and borough in English and fort in French. (The English word fort was borrowed later from French).
The answers to your questions are:
- Yes, the shift was and continues to be a gradual and chaotic process.
- No, there was not a a deliberate and possibly collective decision taken by the educational institutions, the media, or the government of the time.
Yes, there were a few changes that Webster tried, but the history of English spelling is much, much, much more complicated than that. English has never had a single agreed-upon spelling, even within any one country. There is no such thing as the American spelling, nor for that matter is there the British spelling, when discussing the English language. At most, there are individual words that may show a general predilection, but that shifts over time and within writers and publishers. It isn’t a simple us-vs-them situation almost in any pairing. There is too much historical variation.
Here is a summary of my findings below sorted by year:
always inflection, inflexion
always paralyzed, paralysed
always tire, tyre
1680 surprize, surprise
1770 surprise, surprize
1810 jewelry, jewellery
1835 colored, coloured
1835 deputize, deputise
1845 armor, armour
1845 connection, connexion
1905 aluminum, aluminium
1905 woolen, woollen
1910 esophagus, oesophagus
1910 fetus, foetus
1915 leveled, levelled
1920 center, centre
1930 savior, saviour
1940 miter, mitre
1940 specter, spectre
1970 acknowledgment, acknowledgement
1975 theater, theatre
1980 scepter, sceptre
never ameba, amoeba
never glamor, glamour
There is a lot more variation than even that summary shows; please see the more detailed charts below, including some that go the other way by showing British usage. Each of these really is a separate case, and must be considered individually. There is no single, solitary, discrete, and agreed-upon thing called American spelling versus British spelling. There is a vast continuum of conflicting tendencies, some weaving back and forth time across the Atlantic, and across time. Even when one spelling “supersedes” another, it merely comes out ahead in the popularity contest. It usually does not wholly supplant the former spelling.
For the Ngramaniacs
In all cases, the putative “American” spelling is in blue, and the putative “British” spelling is in red. Notice how the answers are all over the board, and some rather surprising, too.
center vs centre
When did center supersede centre in American English? Answer: Around 1910. Ngram
theater vs theatre
When did theater supersede theatre in American English. Answer: During the late 1970s. Ngram
armor vs armour
When did armor supersede armour in American English? Answer: Around 1850. Ngram
glamor vs glamour
When did glamor supersede glamour in American English? Answer: Never, because it has always been a minority usage. Ngram
woolen vs woollen
When did woolen supersede woollen in American English? Answer: around 1905. Ngram
tire vs tyre
When did tire supersede tyre in American English? Answer: Never, because it was always dominant. Ngram
Well, and when did tyre supersede tire in British English? Answer: in the early 1940s. But it only lasted a couple of decades before falling back into minority usage again. Ngram
miter vs mitre
When did miter supersede mitre in American English? Answer: Around 1920. Then again around 1940. Then again around 1970. Ngram
acknowledgment vs acknowledgement
When did acknowledgment supersede acknowledgement in American English? Never. It has always been that way. Ngram
What about the other way around? When did acknowledgement supersede acknowledgment in British English? Answer: Around 1970. Ngram
scepter vs sceptre
When did scepter supersede sceptre in American English? Answer: Around 1980. Ngram
savior vs saviour
When did savior supersede saviour in American English? Answer: Around 1930. Ngram
deputize vs deputise
When did deputize supersede deputise in American English? Answer: Around 1810. Ngram
But what about the other way around? When did deputise supersede deputize in British English? It’s arguable, but the general answer is that it never did. Ngram
ameba vs amoeba
When did ameba supersede amoeba in American English? Answer: Never. Ngram
jewelry vs jewellery
When did jewelry supersede jewellery in American English? Answer: Around 1810. Ngram
inflection vs inflexion
When did inflection supersede inflexion in American English? Answer: It probably never did, because it inflection was probably always the dominant spelling of that word in American publications. Ngram
The data from before 1800 is not of sufficiently high quality to use for drawing conclusions from.
But what about the other way around? When did inflexion supersede inflection in British English? Answer: Mostly never.
Or, depending on the quality of the data, perhaps around 1805. But if so, it only did so for 7 years, up through around 1812. There was a minor and short-lived blip in the early 1920s when inflexion seems to have edged out inflection again in British English for a couple years tops, and then again between 1948–1962. Since then, the inflexion spelling has been on wane in British publication such that by 2000 the inflection spelling dominated the inflexion spelling by a factor of more than 5:1. Ngram
But what about the other way around? When did connexion supersede connection in British English? Answer: Around 1820. But it only did so for around 30 years, up through around 1850. Ngram
colored vs coloured
Since this one seems to be everybody’s favorite peeve, when did colored supersede coloured in American English? Answer: Around 1840. Ngram
leveled vs levelled
When did leveled supersede levelled in American English? Answer: Around 1915. Ngram
fetus vs foetus
When did fetus supersede foetus in American English? Answer: around 1910. Ngram
Hm, but what about the other way around? When did foetus supersede fetus in British English? It didn’t: it gave up the lead around 1970. Ngram
paralyzed vs paralysed
When did paralyzed supersede paralysed in American English? Answer: Always. ngram
And the other way around: when did paralysed supersede paralyzed in British English? Answer, around 1830, but it has been losing a lot of ground recently. Ngram
specter vs spectre
When did specter supersede spectre in American English? Answer: around 1940. Ngram
esophagus vs oesophagus
When did esophagus replace oesophagus in American English? Answer: Around 1910. Ngram
But what about British usage? The answer is that oesophagus seems to have lost to esophagus around 1980, but then may have returned. It’s hard to tell. Ngram
aluminum vs aluminium
When did aluminum supersede aluminium in American English? Answer: around 1900. Ngram
And what about the other way around? When did aluminium supersede aluminum in British English? Answer: around 1850, but it has lost a great deal of ground of late. Ngram
surprize vs surprise
It turns out that surprize was once the dominant form, not surprise, but this didn’t last even a hundred years. Ngram
Then again, here is the British Ngram for the same pair. Notice that even the Brits used the z for a good while, possibly even for longer than in North America:
Summary
I hope you can now see why I said what I said: that there can be no clear answer here. Everything is different. You have to look at each word-pair separately, and you should make sure you aren’t wrong about Britain, either.
Best Answer
Wikipedia has an article on dictionaries, and it says:
How did he choose the words? By studying, and by being well equipped. English wasn't spoken widely anywhere but in England at the time of the earliest English dictionary, so Johnson would have gotten sufficient knowledge to make a dictionary just by studying his own country; and Johnson was described "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history".
Secondly, Johnson's (or Webster's) dictionary would not have been regarded as reliable unless authorities and laymen alike approved of its comprehensiveness. It would not have been approved of if it had missed anything anyone deemed important. Though there were undoubtedly words which were not in the dictionary, the missed words would have been mostly slang. The dictionary was not so authoritative as to discourage use of the inadvertently excluded words. Even now, it doesn't stop people from using an already established word just because they don't find it in a dictionary.
In twenty-seven years, a scholar such as Webster could not have missed anything important. Building on others' attempts and his previous edition, he had ample resources to come up with an exhaustive list.