A Dictionary of the English Language

Overview

About twenty-three hundred pages in its original two folio volumes, Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language, compiled almost entirely single-handedly across nine years and published in 1755. The Dictionary defines some forty-two thousand words and illustrates them with roughly a hundred and fourteen thousand quotations drawn chiefly from English writers of the preceding two centuries, an individual labor scale that dwarfed the teams of scholars the French Academy had used to produce its own national dictionary decades earlier.

The Dictionary’s Preface describes this considerable labor and reflects with genuine philosophical honesty on lexicography’s actual limits, concluding that no dictionary can permanently fix a living language against its own continued drift and change. Many individual definitions carry Johnson’s opinionated personality and wit directly into what might otherwise remain dry reference material, memorable entries for lexicographer, oats and patron among the most frequently quoted. The Dictionary remained the standard English dictionary until the Oxford English Dictionary’s later achievement.

What happens

Nine years of individual compilation. Johnson compiles the entire Dictionary almost single-handedly across nine years, an extraordinary individual labor scale that stands in sharp contrast to the collaborative institutional teams other European nations, France chief among them, had used to produce comparable national dictionaries decades earlier.

Defining forty-two thousand words. The completed Dictionary defines approximately forty-two thousand English words, ranging across the language’s considerable vocabulary from common everyday terms to more specialized and technical language drawn from across English intellectual and literary tradition.

Illustrating with a hundred and fourteen thousand quotations. Johnson illustrates his definitions with roughly a hundred and fourteen thousand quotations drawn chiefly from English writers of the preceding two centuries, grounding each definition in demonstrated literary usage rather than abstract prescriptive assertion, a methodological choice that shaped subsequent lexicographical practice considerably.

The Preface’s honest reckoning. Johnson’s Preface describes the Dictionary’s considerable labor and reflects with genuine intellectual honesty on lexicography’s actual limits, concluding, after nine years spent attempting exactly this task, that no dictionary can permanently fix a living language against its own continued natural drift and change.

Memorable, opinionated definitions. Throughout the Dictionary, individual definitions carry Johnson’s own distinctive wit and personal opinion directly into the reference material, his self-deprecating entry for lexicographer, a harmless drudge, being only the most frequently quoted example among numerous entries where Johnson’s judgment becomes as memorable as the definitions themselves.

Standing as the standard dictionary. The Dictionary remained the standard reference work for the English language for well over a century, until the considerably more systematically collaborative Oxford English Dictionary eventually superseded it, a longevity that testifies to the genuine quality and durability of Johnson’s individual scholarly achievement.

How to read it

Read the Preface’s honest admission about lexicography’s limits as the Dictionary’s genuine philosophical center; Johnson’s willingness to acknowledge, after nine years of sustained labor, that his own project could not fully achieve its original ambition of fixing the language gives the entire work an intellectual humility worth noticing alongside its considerable scholarly achievement.

Pay close attention to how the Dictionary’s roughly hundred and fourteen thousand illustrative quotations ground individual definitions in actual demonstrated literary usage; this evidentiary method, rather than simple prescriptive assertion, shaped how subsequent English-language lexicography would approach the relationship between dictionary definition and living language practice.

Notice how Johnson’s own opinionated wit enters directly into ostensibly neutral reference material; entries like lexicographer, oats and patron reveal a personal judgment and even prejudice that later, more institutionally produced dictionaries would generally suppress in favor of more neutral, collectively authored definitions.

Consider the considerable contrast between Johnson’s individual nine-year labor and the institutional, collaborative teams other nations used for comparable dictionary projects; this contrast is worth weighing directly when considering what kind of scholarly achievement individual sustained effort can accomplish compared to institutional collective enterprise.

Read this Dictionary alongside Johnson’s Preface to Shakespeare and Lives of the Poets to see how the same exacting critical judgment and characteristic prose style Johnson brings to lexicography also shapes his literary criticism and biography, a consistent intellectual sensibility running across his considerably varied body of work.

Questions it raises

• Does Johnson’s honest admission that no dictionary can permanently fix a living language undermine or actually strengthen the Dictionary’s overall achievement? Does acknowledging a project’s genuine limits make the completed work more or less impressive as intellectual accomplishment?
• How does the Dictionary’s method of illustrating definitions with extensive literary quotations compare to more purely prescriptive approaches to lexicography? Does grounding definitions in demonstrated usage produce a more accurate or more useful reference work than abstract rule-based definition alone?
• What does Johnson’s willingness to let personal wit and opinion enter individual definitions suggest about his own understanding of what a dictionary should actually be? Does this personal quality compromise the Dictionary’s reference function, or does it add genuine value beyond pure lexicographical utility?
• How should a reader weigh the considerable contrast between Johnson’s individual nine-year labor and the institutional, collaborative approach other nations used for comparable dictionaries? Does this contrast reveal something specific about eighteenth-century English intellectual culture, or about Johnson’s own particular capacities and temperament?
• Given that the Dictionary remained standard for well over a century, what does this remarkable longevity suggest about the actual quality and durability of Johnson’s individual scholarly achievement, compared to reference works produced by larger institutional teams?
• What does the Dictionary’s eventual replacement by the more systematically collaborative Oxford English Dictionary suggest about the relationship between individual scholarly vision and institutional collective effort in producing enduring reference works? Does one approach have genuine, durable advantages the other cannot match?