‘Johnson's Dictionary’, A Dictionary of the English Language

‘Johnson's Dictionary’, A Dictionary of the English Language, by S. Johnson, published 1755.

Johnson entered into an agreement in 1746 with Dodsley and others to write a dictionary, the first of its kind in English. A Plan and dedication to Chesterfield followed in 1747. Johnson said his object was to produce ‘a dictionary by which the pronunciation of our language may be fixed, and its attainment facilitated; by which its purity may be preserved, its use ascertained, and its duration lengthened’. He wrote the definitions of over 40,000 words, illustrating them with about 114,000 quotations drawn from every field of learning and literature from the time of Sidney onwards; his derivations suffer from the scantiness of etymological knowledge in his day, but the work as a whole remained without rival until the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary. His well-known playful definitions (e.g. lexicographer, ‘a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge’) represent a mere handful in the body of his enormous achievement. (See also dictionary.)