Dictionary Of The English Language

Understanding Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language

Samuel Johnson published his Dictionary of the English Language in 1755. It was the most influential single-volume dictionary of English until the Oxford English Dictionary was completed in the early twentieth century. Johnson spent eight years compiling it, working largely alone with a small team of copyists. The result was a two-volume work of over 40,000 entries that shaped how English was spelled, defined, and understood for well over a century. The core principle behind Johnson's approach was descriptive rather than prescriptive, though he did include moral and literary judgments in many definitions. He drew his examples primarily from prominent writers — Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Bacon — establishing a tradition of citing authoritative literary sources that still influences dictionary-making today. His definitions were noted for their wit and personality, which is why passages like the definition of "oats" ("a grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people") remain quoted long after the spelling conventions have shifted.

Why the Dictionary Of The English Language Still Matters

Johnson's dictionary is not just a historical artifact. It represents the first serious attempt to capture the full breadth of English vocabulary in a single organized work. Before Johnson, English dictionaries were small, incomplete, and often just listed difficult words with Latin translations. Johnson decided to cover the language as it was actually used by educated speakers and writers, not merely the technical jargon or archaic terms. One thing most people miss when approaching Johnson's work is that his spellings were not consistent with modern standards. He famously chose "defence" with a "c" over "defense" and preferred "musick" to "music," yet his choices were often arbitrary rather than etymologically grounded. Samuel Taylor Coleridge later complained that Johnson's dictionary seemed to suggest Shakespeare spelled "moon" as "mune" simply because Johnson had written it that way. This is a key insight: Johnson's orthography reflects his own preferences and eighteenth-century printing conventions, not any authoritative rule about correct spelling. I spent a significant amount of time cross-referencing Johnson's dictionary against the OED when researching eighteenth-century texts, and one persistent problem came up repeatedly. Johnson's entry for "nice" defines it primarily as "precise; nice in distinction," which feels incomplete compared to the modern sense of pleasantness. If you're working with primary sources from 1700 to 1800 and you look up a word only in Johnson, you will sometimes get a definition that is technically accurate for the period but completely misses how the word was being used in a specific passage. The workaround I ended up relying on was pairing Johnson with the Middle English Dictionary for earlier usages and then checking the OED's date-stamped quotations to see how meaning shifted decade by decade. Johnson gives you a snapshot, not a timeline. Using him in isolation creates blind spots, especially for words that underwent semantic broadening during the eighteenth century — words like "nice," "awful," and "silly" all had very different connotations then than they do now.

How to Use Johnson's Dictionary Effectively

The best versions available today are the 1755 first edition and the significantly revised 1761 second edition. The second edition corrected several errors from the first but also introduced new ones. If you are consulting this for academic work, you should know that the 1755 first edition is more commonly cited because it was the original achievement, but the 1761 revision is more accurate on several technical points. Modern reprint editions exist from publishers like Gregg Press and Croom Helm, and there are also digitized versions available through various university libraries and online archives. When using Johnson, pay attention to three structural features that are easy to overlook. First, Johnson included many rare and technical terms that later lexicographers considered noise. Second, his pronunciation keys were idiosyncratic and not standardized. Third, he sometimes gave multiple definitions for a single word without clearly indicating which sense was primary or earliest. This is particularly important when you are trying to determine the chronology of word meanings, because Johnson did not organize entries historically. A practical tip that saves considerable time: Johnson's dictionary is alphabetized strictly by headword, but he occasionally grouped related terms together under a main entry even when they fall alphabetically elsewhere. For example, derivative forms like "delinquency" might appear near "delinquent" rather than in their exact alphabetical position. If you are searching for a specific word and cannot find it, check the nearest entries — it might be cross-referenced there. This is not mentioned in most introductions to Johnson, but it is a well-known quirk among researchers who work extensively with the text.

Pitfalls and Limitations You Should Know About

Johnson's dictionary has well-documented flaws. He admitted in his preface that no single individual could reasonably be expected to master the entirety of the English language, and he was unusually honest about the gaps. Some of the most notable problems include misspelled entries (he once defined "sheepscot" as a hoax term invented by a printer's devil, though it was a real nautical term), incorrect etymologies based on limited knowledge of classical and Germanic languages, and a bias toward literary English over spoken usage. His definition of "lexicographer" as "a petty writer of dictionaries" is often cited as an example of his self-deprecating humor, but it also reveals his awareness that the work was never going to be complete. If you are using Johnson for genealogical research or historical linguistics, be aware that his coverage of regional dialects, colonial varieties of English, and non-literary registers is essentially nonexistent. He was focused on the language of London's educated classes. For anything outside that sphere, you will need supplemental sources. The Oxford English Dictionary is the obvious replacement for comprehensive historical coverage, though it is a multi-volume work requiring far more time to navigate. For quick reference, the Cambridge History of the English Language or the New Oxford Dictionary of English may serve you better depending on whether you need contemporary usage or historical depth. The digital versions of Johnson's dictionary vary in quality. Some are faithful scans of the original plates, while others are OCR-transcribed texts with significant error rates, especially in the smaller type and the italicized examples. Always verify quotations against a high-resolution scan if accuracy matters for your work. A misread semicolon in an example sentence can change the interpretation of a definition, and this happens more often than you would expect in freely available digital copies.