A Dictionary of The English Language - The Text

The Text

A Dictionary of the English Language was somewhat large and very expensive. Its pages were 18 inches (46 cm) tall and nearly 20 inches (50 cm) wide. The paper was of the finest quality available, the cost of which ran to nearly £1,600; more than Johnson had been paid to write the book. Johnson himself pronounced the book "Vasta mole superbus" ("Proud in its great bulk"). No bookseller could possibly hope to print this book without help; outside a few special editions of the Bible no book of this heft and size had even been set to type.

The title page reads:

The words "Samuel Johnson" and "English Language" were printed in red; the rest was printed in black. The preface and headings were set in 4.6 mm "English" type, the text—double columned—was set in 3.5 mm pica. This first edition of the dictionary contained a 42,773 word list, to which only a few more were added in subsequent editions. One of Johnson's important innovations was to illustrate the meanings of his words by literary quotation, of which there are around 114,000. The authors most frequently cited by Johnson include Shakespeare, Milton and Dryden. For example:

OPULENCE

Wealth; riches; affluence

"There in full opulence a banker dwelt,

Who all the joys and pangs of riches felt;

His sideboard glitter'd with imagin'd plate,

And his proud fancy held a vast estate."

-- Jonathan Swift

Furthermore, Johnson, unlike Bailey, added notes on a word's usage, rather than being merely descriptive.

Unlike most modern lexicographers, Johnson introduced humour or prejudice into quite a number of his definitions. Among the best-known are:

• "Excise: a hateful tax levied upon commodities and adjudged not by the common judges of property but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid"
• "Lexicographer: a writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge that busies himself in tracing the original and detailing the signification of words"
• "Oats: a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people"

A much less well-known example is:

• "Monsieur: a term of reproach for a Frenchman"

He included whimsical little-known words, such as:

• "Writative - A word of Pope's, not to be imitated: "Increase of years makes men more talkative but less writative; to that degree I now write letters but of plain how d'ey's." "

On a more serious level, Johnson's work showed a heretofore unseen meticulousness. Unlike all the proto-dictionaries that had come before, painstaking care went into the completeness when it came not only to "illustrations" but also to definitions as well:

• "Turn" had 16 definitions with 15 illustrations
• "Time" had 20 definitions with 14 illustrations
• "Put" ran more than 5,000 words spread over 3 pages
• "Take" had 134 definitions, running 8,000 words, over 5 pages

The original goal was to publish the dictionary in two folio volumes: A–K and L–Z. But that soon proved unwieldy, unprofitable, and unrealistic. Subsequent printings ran to four volumes; even these formed a stack 10 inches (25.4 cm) tall, and weighed in at nearly 21 pounds (9.5 kg). In addition to the sheer physical heft of Johnson's dictionary, came the equally hefty price: £4/10/-. (equivalent to £675 in 2005). So discouraging was the price that by 1784, thirty years after the first edition was published, when the dictionary had by then run through five editions, only about 6,000 copies were in circulation—an average sale of 200 books a year for thirty years.

Johnson's etymologies would be considered poor by modern standards, and he gave little guide to pronunciation; one example being "Cough: A convulsion of the lungs, vellicated by some sharp serosity. It is pronounced coff". Much of his dictionary was prescriptivist, and it was also linguistically conservative, advocating traditional spellings, for example olde, rather than the simplifications that would be favoured 73 years later by Noah Webster.

In spite of its shortcomings, the dictionary was far and away the best of its day, a milestone in English-language lexicography to which all modern dictionaries owe some gratitude. Johnson's dictionary was still considered authoritative until the appearance of the Oxford English Dictionary at the end of the nineteenth century.