Dictionary of the English Language

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The Dictionary of the English Language is a dictionary of English written by Samuel Johnson . It was published in 1755 and is still considered one of the most influential dictionaries in the history of the English language.

Emergence

The early New English vowel shift in the 15th and 16th centuries led not only to a radical change in phonology but also to a very inconsistent spelling . Johnson's Dictionary arose not least from the desire for a reliable reference work on spelling and pronunciation. In June 1746, Johnson therefore signed a contract with a group of London booksellers and undertook to write such a dictionary for £ 1,575. The initially estimated working time of three years became nine years before the book was finally published on April 15, 1755.

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Johnson's intention was to provide an overview of what he believed to be the most important terms used in English in the 18th century . A complete inventory of the vocabulary of the time was not his aim. Still, the dictionary has 42,773 words. In addition to information on spelling, pronunciation and meaning, Johnson was the first English lexicographer to record around 114,000 literary quotations. He relied mainly on William Shakespeare , John Milton and John Dryden .

In contrast to modern lexicography , which strives for a description of the lemmas that is as neutral as possible , Johnson liked to fall back on aphorisms and humorous tips. For example in the declaration of Oat (oats): " a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people " (a grain that is fed to horses in England, but to the population in Scotland) . He did not exclude himself from his ridicule: Lexicographer (lexicographer): " a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge ... " (a writer of dictionaries; a harmless workhorse ...)

From today's perspective, his etymological information is insufficient; the indications for pronunciation are rather rough: “ Cough: A convulsion of the lungs, vellicated by some sharp serosity. It is pronounced coff ". As a child of his day, Johnson took a prescriptive stance. The promotion of a “good” vocabulary appropriate to one's status was more important to him than the neutral compilation of the vocabulary. He also took a linguistically conservative approach in other respects. In the Dictionary of the English Language, there are still numerous ancient spellings such as “ olde ” instead of the more modern “ old ”, as it appears around 70 years later in Noah Webster's dictionary .

Even if Johnson's approach does not correspond to today's usual descriptive, i.e. purely descriptive, approach, the author has to be credited with the fact that his work provided a guide to at least linguistically overcoming the class boundaries. And last but not least, in terms of linguistic history , the classification of lemmas into categories such as “ slang ” or “ colloquial ” , which he made for the first time, is very interesting; it enables an understanding of English in the 18th century that is otherwise not easily possible.

Despite the criticisms mentioned, the dictionary was by far the best and most important English-language dictionary of its time. As a milestone in the history of lexicography, it set the trend until the Oxford English Dictionary was published at the end of the 19th century .

literature

  • James L. Clifford: Dictionary Johnson: Samuel Johnson's Middle Years. McGraw-Hill 1979, ISBN 0-07-011378-5
  • Jack Lynch (Ed.): Samuel Johnson's Dictionary: Selections from the 1755 Work that Defined the English Language. Atlantic Books 2004, ISBN 1-84354-296-X