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Samuel Johnson's Dictionary : Selections from the 1755 Work That Defined the English Language
Two volumes thick and 2,300 pages long, Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary, published in 1755, marked a milestone in a language in desperate need of standards. No English dictionary before it had devoted so much space to everyday words, been so thorough in its definitions, or illustrated usage by quoting from Shakespeare and other great writers.
Johnson’s Dictionary would define the language for the next 150 years, until the arrival of the Oxford English Dictionary. Johnson’s was the dictionary used by Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, Wordsworth and Coleridge, the Brontës and the Brownings, Thomas Hardy and Oscar Wilde. Modern dictionaries owe much to Johnson’s work.
This new edition, created by Levenger Press, contains more than 3,100 selections from the original, including etymology, definitions, and illustrative passages in their original spelling. Bristling with quotations, the Dictionary offers memorable passages on subjects ranging from books and critics to dreams and ethics. It also features three new indexes created out of entries in this edition: words found in Shakespeare’s works, words from other great literary works, and piquant terms used in eighteenth-century discussions of such topics as law, medicine, and the sexes.
Finally, Johnson’s “Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language,” seldom seen in print, which he wrote eight years before the Dictionary, is reproduced in its entirety. For those who appreciate literature, interpret the law, and love language, this a browser’s delight—an encyclopedia of the age and a dictionary for the ages.
Johnson’s Dictionary would define the language for the next 150 years, until the arrival of the Oxford English Dictionary. Johnson’s was the dictionary used by Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, Wordsworth and Coleridge, the Brontës and the Brownings, Thomas Hardy and Oscar Wilde. Modern dictionaries owe much to Johnson’s work.
This new edition, created by Levenger Press, contains more than 3,100 selections from the original, including etymology, definitions, and illustrative passages in their original spelling. Bristling with quotations, the Dictionary offers memorable passages on subjects ranging from books and critics to dreams and ethics. It also features three new indexes created out of entries in this edition: words found in Shakespeare’s works, words from other great literary works, and piquant terms used in eighteenth-century discussions of such topics as law, medicine, and the sexes.
Finally, Johnson’s “Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language,” seldom seen in print, which he wrote eight years before the Dictionary, is reproduced in its entirety. For those who appreciate literature, interpret the law, and love language, this a browser’s delight—an encyclopedia of the age and a dictionary for the ages.
646 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 2004
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
April 25, 2020
‘Dictionaries are like watches,’ as Samuel Johnson said in one of his many slightly tiresome aphorisms: ‘the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.’ He gave himself sufficient wriggle-room there, which he makes use of in the Dictionary in a number of entries that just say ‘Of this word I know not the meaning’. I find this rather admirable, although it must have been a bit annoying to people looking things up.
This is one of the best cut-downs of Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language that I've seen – most other abridgements tend to cut out the quotations or trim the number of senses, with a view to including more headwords. But here, editor Jack Lynch has picked a smaller number of entries, but given them all in full. This is infinitely preferable, since no one is reading a dictionary from 1755 for comprehensiveness of definitions, but rather for some flavour of eighteenth-century lexicography, or of Johnson's writing style, or of how his Dictionary works, all of which are perfectly represented here.
Considering how much Samuel Johnson loved to tell other people they were wrong, it's amazing how unproscriptive his Dictionary is. To be sure, he can't stop himself often commenting that something is ‘A bad word’, but at least he includes it in the first place, and gives evidence of where it's been used in literature. He never starts from his idea of a word's definition, and looks for citations of it; instead, he starts by looking at citations from literature, and derives the definitions from this real-world usage. It was a ‘descriptive’ model that has survived to make the modern Oxford English Dictionary (which built on Johnson) the greatest in the world.
He was criticised at the time for including too many ‘inkhorn words’, i.e. obscure terms that nobody really uses (e.g. mundivagant ‘wandering through the world’). This was easy to satirise, and still is; no one of my age and provenance will be able to pick this up without the scene from Blackadder coming to mind:
Actually, though, what's impressive about the Dictionary is how few obscure words Johnson includes, proportionally, compared to other wordbooks of the time. The vast majority of the book consists of regular terminology, which for a modern reader is often fascinating – we can catch the current state of science and knowledge in many of these entries:
(Uranus would be discovered in the 1780s, and Neptune not till the middle of the nineteenth century.) The same can be said for many political terms like republican ‘One who thinks a commonwealth without monarchy the best government’ – a dirty word for an arch-Tory like Johnson. And if you read a lot of literature from the time, many of these definitions can be helpful in ways that a small modern dictionary cannot; consulting a Pocket Oxford will not help you understand what, for instance, Austen meant by sensibility (defined by Johnson as ‘Quickness of sensation’ or ‘Quickness of perception’).
Similarly, Georgian novels are forever referring to ‘chairmen’, which might give some casual readers the impression that London was full of boards of directors, unless you appreciate that the primary definition of chairman was ‘One whose trade it is to carry a [sedan] chair’. Also useful are the definitions of a word like nice, whose eight senses include ‘accurate in judgment to minute exactness’, ‘delicate’ and ‘fastidious’ – but not ‘pleasant’, a meaning which was only just beginning to emerge as Johnson wrote.
Lynch, who is (or was) the editor of a Johnson journal, has clearly put this together as a labour of love, and it shows – it's a beautifully produced and typeset book, and comes bulging with handy bibliographies, indices of quotations, and thematic lists of vocabulary covered. It's an utter joy to browse through – which restores to Johnson's landmark, for a modern reader, the pleasure of any great dictionary.
This is one of the best cut-downs of Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language that I've seen – most other abridgements tend to cut out the quotations or trim the number of senses, with a view to including more headwords. But here, editor Jack Lynch has picked a smaller number of entries, but given them all in full. This is infinitely preferable, since no one is reading a dictionary from 1755 for comprehensiveness of definitions, but rather for some flavour of eighteenth-century lexicography, or of Johnson's writing style, or of how his Dictionary works, all of which are perfectly represented here.
Considering how much Samuel Johnson loved to tell other people they were wrong, it's amazing how unproscriptive his Dictionary is. To be sure, he can't stop himself often commenting that something is ‘A bad word’, but at least he includes it in the first place, and gives evidence of where it's been used in literature. He never starts from his idea of a word's definition, and looks for citations of it; instead, he starts by looking at citations from literature, and derives the definitions from this real-world usage. It was a ‘descriptive’ model that has survived to make the modern Oxford English Dictionary (which built on Johnson) the greatest in the world.
He was criticised at the time for including too many ‘inkhorn words’, i.e. obscure terms that nobody really uses (e.g. mundivagant ‘wandering through the world’). This was easy to satirise, and still is; no one of my age and provenance will be able to pick this up without the scene from Blackadder coming to mind:
Dr. Samuel Johnson: Here it is, sir. The very cornerstone of English scholarship. This book, sir, contains every word in our beloved language.
Blackadder: Every single one, sir?
Dr. Samuel Johnson: Every single word, sir!
Blackadder: Oh, well, in that case, sir, I hope you will not object if I also offer the Doctor my most enthusiastic contrafibularities.
Dr. Samuel Johnson: …What?
Blackadder: "Contrafibularities", sir? It is a common word down our way.
Dr. Samuel Johnson: Damn!
[he scribbles in the book]
Blackadder: Oh, I'm sorry, sir. I'm anaspeptic – phrasmotic – even compunctuous to have caused you such pericombobulation.
Actually, though, what's impressive about the Dictionary is how few obscure words Johnson includes, proportionally, compared to other wordbooks of the time. The vast majority of the book consists of regular terminology, which for a modern reader is often fascinating – we can catch the current state of science and knowledge in many of these entries:
plánet n.s. [planeta, Lat. πλαναω; planette, Fr.] Planets are the erratic or wandering stars, and which are not like the fixt ones always in the same position to one another: we now number the earth among the primary planets, because we know it moves round the sun, as Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus and Mercury do, and that in a circle between Mars and Venus…
(Uranus would be discovered in the 1780s, and Neptune not till the middle of the nineteenth century.) The same can be said for many political terms like republican ‘One who thinks a commonwealth without monarchy the best government’ – a dirty word for an arch-Tory like Johnson. And if you read a lot of literature from the time, many of these definitions can be helpful in ways that a small modern dictionary cannot; consulting a Pocket Oxford will not help you understand what, for instance, Austen meant by sensibility (defined by Johnson as ‘Quickness of sensation’ or ‘Quickness of perception’).
Similarly, Georgian novels are forever referring to ‘chairmen’, which might give some casual readers the impression that London was full of boards of directors, unless you appreciate that the primary definition of chairman was ‘One whose trade it is to carry a [sedan] chair’. Also useful are the definitions of a word like nice, whose eight senses include ‘accurate in judgment to minute exactness’, ‘delicate’ and ‘fastidious’ – but not ‘pleasant’, a meaning which was only just beginning to emerge as Johnson wrote.
Lynch, who is (or was) the editor of a Johnson journal, has clearly put this together as a labour of love, and it shows – it's a beautifully produced and typeset book, and comes bulging with handy bibliographies, indices of quotations, and thematic lists of vocabulary covered. It's an utter joy to browse through – which restores to Johnson's landmark, for a modern reader, the pleasure of any great dictionary.
October 29, 2018
For over 20 years, I've had a copy of Johnson's Dictionary: A Modern Selection, edited by E.L. McAdam and George Milne (I bought my copy at Johnson's Gough Square house in London), and for the past few years I've had a digital version of the complete dictionary on my iPad. Both of these have proved to be less than totally satisfactory to me, for different reasons. But Jack Lynch's abridgement has proven to be the version I have been waiting for.
The strengths of this edition are many. Most importantly (to me, anyway), each of the chosen selections is included in full: etymology, definition(s), and illustrative quotations. This is a vast improvement over McAdam and Milne, who dispense with most of the quotations and only include those definitions they find interesting - they include only two definitions of "sensible," while Lynch's complete entry consists of eight definitions and eighteen quotations, and takes up nearly a page.
And the quotations are fascinating; as Henry Hitchings said in his book on the Dictionary, they make Johnson's work an anthology of English writing up to that point. Lynch's edition accentuates that aspect by including indexes of Shakespearean citations and of citations of other writers. There is also an index of "piquant terms."
That last index is a reminder that Johnson's Dictionary just makes for entertaining reading, due to Johnson's choices, biases, and sometimes mistakes. One of the most famous mistakes is the first definition of "pastern": "The knee of a horse." But until thumbing through this volume, I hadn't known that there is a second definition, with a wonderful illustration: "The legs of a human creature in contempt. So straight she walk'd, and on her pasterns high; If seeing her behind, he lik'd her pace, Now turning short, he better lik'd her face. Dryden"
Until I get that first edition for my birthday one of these years, Lynch's selection will be an excellent and practical substitute.
The strengths of this edition are many. Most importantly (to me, anyway), each of the chosen selections is included in full: etymology, definition(s), and illustrative quotations. This is a vast improvement over McAdam and Milne, who dispense with most of the quotations and only include those definitions they find interesting - they include only two definitions of "sensible," while Lynch's complete entry consists of eight definitions and eighteen quotations, and takes up nearly a page.
And the quotations are fascinating; as Henry Hitchings said in his book on the Dictionary, they make Johnson's work an anthology of English writing up to that point. Lynch's edition accentuates that aspect by including indexes of Shakespearean citations and of citations of other writers. There is also an index of "piquant terms."
That last index is a reminder that Johnson's Dictionary just makes for entertaining reading, due to Johnson's choices, biases, and sometimes mistakes. One of the most famous mistakes is the first definition of "pastern": "The knee of a horse." But until thumbing through this volume, I hadn't known that there is a second definition, with a wonderful illustration: "The legs of a human creature in contempt. So straight she walk'd, and on her pasterns high; If seeing her behind, he lik'd her pace, Now turning short, he better lik'd her face. Dryden"
Until I get that first edition for my birthday one of these years, Lynch's selection will be an excellent and practical substitute.
July 6, 2025
haters: "You're reading the dictionary?"
me (smugly): No, I'm reading a dictionary, Samuel Johnston's.
haters: why
me: how else would I know the about word "bepissed", and Sam J's hatred of the Scottish people?
(haters give me a well deserved wedgie)
me (smugly): No, I'm reading a dictionary, Samuel Johnston's.
haters: why
me: how else would I know the about word "bepissed", and Sam J's hatred of the Scottish people?
(haters give me a well deserved wedgie)
August 21, 2012
one of the few dictionaries that has had me laughing out loud. for 'coffeehouse' johnson has, "a house of entertainment where coffee is sold, and guests are supplied with newspapers." a very nice browsing dictionary- not so much the sort for bouncing around comparing word histories and the like (for this see shipley's origins of english words, a very different work but also a very entertaining dictionary), but rather for just reading entries at random to find some quirky phrase or other. this edition does make me wish i had something closer to the unabridged dictionary- lynch seems to have edited this with an eye towards including obscure words that give a sense of the 18th century, which is nice, but i want more. for example, I remember seeing a reference to johnson's 'elephant' entry somewhere or other and was dissapointed not to find it included here. that said, the full text is in the public domain and available on the internet without having to pay for or lift the 2000+ pages of the original, so, whatever, this is a nice little sample to have on the dictionary shelf.
June 23, 2013
Well chosen selections from Samuel Johnson's 1755 masterpiece. Johnson was occasionally opinionated and sometimes even wrong (he wrote of the letter X that it "begins no word in the English language") but learned, entertaining, and dogged. It's a treat to browse through, although I read it cover to cover, or, as you like it. I did.
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September 23, 2007Johnson's version of this literary-reference dictionary was extensive-- this is a sampling from the 18th century genius' colleciton that Lynch, a scholar, has put together. If you love reading and language, this is a must! With this and the OED, you are set.
June 14, 2022
It's Johnson. What else must I say?
I obviously did not read this from cover to cover, but it is fun flipping through and finding funny definitions and archaic words.
I obviously did not read this from cover to cover, but it is fun flipping through and finding funny definitions and archaic words.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews