This past Sunday was the anniversary of the birth of essayist and writer Samuel Johnson. Born in 1709, Johnson was an English critic and writer whose impact on modern English remains evident today, since Johnson undertook the task of cataloging the English language.
Though dictionaries weren’t a new concept in Johnson’s time, there wasn’t a universal dictionary for English. Instead, lexicons were largely homemade or personal dictionaries ranging in the couple hundreds. For Johnson, the necessity to create a dictionary was the simple task of standardizing language.
The short project quickly ballooned, and as Johnson sought to make an authoritative English text, he instead created something equally analytical as it was opinionated. Spending nearly ten years, Johnson compiled 40,000 words and 114,000 textual examples into “A Dictionary of the English Language.”
Johnson’s dictionary was a stepping stone in the process of language, apparent in the biases Johnson drew from in writing. The following is a selection that demonstrates Johnson’s opinion and humor coming through the definition.
“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."
Johnson’s humor and opinion were even critiqued in his time, with selections from the biography “The Life of Samuel Johnson.” One moment has Johnson giving a humorous apology for the poor choice of definitions since some words he couldn’t find a definition or couldn’t separate his own biases.
The legacy of Johnson is felt throughout our cultural history. He has appeared in our memes as a figure of confusion in the dated “Blackadder” sketch. Kurt Vonnegut’s review of the dictionary draws upon the legacy of Johnson to deride the contemporary state of dictionaries, where words are seemingly forgotten.
It would be another 173 years until a similar endeavor to catalog language would be undertaken by the Oxford English Dictionary, or OED. However, the content and research put into the project would outshine Johnson’s early work, which established the foundations for providing a definition and an example of the definitions.
The OED maintains a library and etymology of more than 600,000 English words. More than fifteen times the entries of Johnson’s original dictionary, the OED remains an important resource in etymology and vocabulary. Available to most college students, OU included, the OED is a substantial database.
Since then, the OED dictionaries have become more concise. Each new iteration adopts a clutch of necessary and popular words to satisfy the needs of writers and scrabble players.
Though words are not being erased from history since they are available digitally, their exclusion doesn’t encourage discovery. New words aren’t pushed on the reader like they are with line-by-line scanning.
Dictionaries have changed since the time of Johnson. Though there have been advances, there have been step-backs in the exclusion of old words. Dictionaries become personal devices, with favorite words. Though, with words dropped each year one is reminded of Vonnegut. “Everybody associated with a new dictionary ain't necessarily a new Samuel Johnson.”
Benjamin Ervin is a senior studying English literature and writing at Ohio University. Please note that the views and opinions of the columnists do not reflect those of The Post. Want to talk more about it? Let Benjamin know by emailing him be425014@ohio.edu.
