22 January—Samuel Johnson published his idiosyncratic “A Dictionary of the English Language in which the Words are Deduced from their Originals and illustrated in their different Significations by Examples from the best Writers to which are prefixed a History of the Language and an English Grammar” in 1755. He did it single-handedly (with secretarial help) in about eight years, somewhat longer than he had told his patrons it would take but a none the less Herculean accomplishment.

Dr. Johnson, who maintained that “no man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money,” was paid £1,575 for his lexicographical labors, about £260,000 today, over $320,000 in real money. That’s just about what a Connecticut state cop is paid per year including excessive overtime during his or her most lucrative triennium on the job to build up a hefty pension.

Johnson’s English Dictionary, though not the first to be published, was the first halfway decent one of and for our beautiful, constantly evolving language. It defined and illustrated some 42,000 words with 110,000 quotations including Johnson’s own curmudgeonly comments. It’s far more entertaining reading than the highly overrated Oxford English Dictionary (OED), that started life in the late nineteenth century as “A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles; Founded Mainly on the Materials Collected by The Philological Society.”

Like OED, Johnson’s Dictionary is descriptive, with definitions derived from actual usage. English dictionaries before Johnson’s magnificent magnum opus tended to be prescriptive, telling readers how words and grammar in general should—many teachers would say must—be used, rather than how they are (and were) used.

The caveat there is that the discretionary editorial choice of illustrations and language to describe usage is itself implicitly prescriptive. That’s obvious in Johnson’s Dictionary, perhaps less so in OED, which may describe words as “non-standard” or “coarse,” for instance, and be rather selective in choice of illustrations. OED is not quite as comprehensive as people are led to believe.

(In the late sixties, I volunteered to scout out and submit illustrations for OED’s second supplement. I regularly argued with the editor, Robert Burchfield, about the relevance and actual—contextual—meaning of words I gave him, as well as his policy of excessive exclusion. He was the editor, I a mere volunteer, so he invariably prevailed. So I stopped submitting file cards while we were still on cordial terms. He was a Kiwi, like my thesis supervisors.)

Johnson’s Dictionary can at times be as titillating as Ambrose Bierce’s “Devil’s Dictionary,” published in 1911, which, however, was strictly and brilliantly satirical. Even West Hartford’s Noah Webster injected the occasional mordant wit into his largely prescriptive 1806 “A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language” and “An American Dictionary of the English Language,” published in 1828—but nothing compared to Johnson or Bierce.

Here are a few of Dr. Johnson’s best known (but not most well-known) delightfully quirky definitions:

“Excise: a hateful tax levied upon commodities and adjudged not by the common judges of property but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid.”

“Lexicographer: a writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge that busies himself in tracing the original and detailing the signification of words.”

“Monsieur: a term of reproach for a Frenchman.”

“Oats: a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.”

“Patron: One who countenances, supports, or protects. Commonly a wretch who supports with insolence, and is paid with flattery.”