A Dictionary of the English Language Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
A Dictionary of the English Language, one of the most influential dictionaries in the history of the English language, was prepared by Samuel Johnson and appeared in print in 1755.The dictionary responded to a widely felt need for stability in the language. Calls and proposals for a new dictionary had been made for decades before a group of London booksellers (including Robert Dodsley and Thomas Longman) contracted Johnson in June, 1746 to prepare the work for the sum of £1575. Though he expected to finish in three years, it took Johnson nearly nine years. Remarkably, he completed the work singlehandedly, with only clerical assistance to copy out the illustrative quotations that he had marked in books. Johnson prepared several revised editions during his life.
The dictionary has a word list of about 40,000 words. An important innovation of Johnson's was to illustrate the meaningss of his words by literary quotation. Most frequently, Johnson quoted Shakespeare, Milton and Dryden. The dictionary contains over 100,000 quotations.
Unlike most modern lexicographers, Johnson introduced humour or prejudice into a few his definitions. Among the best known are "Excise: a hateful tax levied upon commodities..."; "Lexicographer: a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge..."; and "Oats: a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people".
Johnson's etymologies would be considered poor by modern standards, and he gave no guide to pronunciation. His dictionary was unashamedly prescriptivist and linguistically conservative, advocating traditional spellings rather than the simplifications that would be favoured by Noah Webster a century later.
In spite of whatever shortcomings it might have, however, 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.
The first edition of the dictionary appeared in two folio volumes. As of 2002 a first edition might sell for US$25,000 to US$30,000, but many later editions and facsimiles have appeared. In 1995 in the UK, a facsimile of the first edition cost £200 (approximately US$300). Contemporary selections from Johnson's dictionary are available in Samuel Johnson's Dictionary, ISBN 0802714218.
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