"The lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach"
April 15, 2015 4:58 PM   Subscribe

Today is the 260th anniversary of the publication of Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language. It was an innovative, landmark work, which focused on not just "hard words" (as previous dictionaries had), and also introduced the practice of providing quotations from authors illustrating the definitions. There's a dictionary quiz night in London if you can make it.
posted by anothermug (13 comments total) 12 users marked this as a favorite
 
I love me some Samuel Johnson. One of my favorite passages in Boswell is when he and Dr. J. We're boating on the Thames and Johnson traded off-colour barbs with other boaters.
posted by rankfreudlite at 5:14 PM on April 15, 2015 [2 favorites]


lexicographer: a harmless drudge.
posted by mr vino at 5:43 PM on April 15, 2015 [1 favorite]


I hope you will not object, sir, if I offer you my most sincere contrafribularities on your fine post!
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 6:24 PM on April 15, 2015 [6 favorites]


I highly recommend visiting Dr Johnson's house in London (follow the "dictionary quiz night link" in the post above). The exhibits are interesting and the staff is friendly and love a good chat with visitors.
posted by Triplanetary at 6:31 PM on April 15, 2015 [2 favorites]


I hope you will not object, sir, if I offer you my most sincere contrafribularities on your fine post!

Waiter, more port! And some mutton!
posted by anothermug at 6:34 PM on April 15, 2015 [2 favorites]


Fun fact: any rare-book dealer will confirm that while the First Edition is extremely valuable, the brief run of the Third Edition, from which the word "cromulent" was accidentally omitted, is nearly priceless.
posted by uosuaq at 6:54 PM on April 15, 2015


Dr Johnson, C is for Contrafibularity.
posted by standardasparagus at 7:01 PM on April 15, 2015 [2 favorites]


Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary:

LEXICOGRAPHER, n. A pestilent fellow who, under the pretense of recording some particular stage in the development of a language, does what he can to arrest its growth, stiffen its flexibility and mechanize its methods. For your lexicographer, having written his dictionary, comes to be considered "as one having authority," whereas his function is only to make a record, not to give a law. The natural servility of the human understanding having invested him with judicial power, surrenders its right of reason and submits itself to a chronicle as if it were a statue. Let the dictionary (for example) mark a good word as "obsolete" or "obsolescent" and few men thereafter venture to use it, whatever their need of it and however desirable its restoration to favor— whereby the process of improverishment is accelerated and speech decays. On the contrary, recognizing the truth that language must grow by innovation if it grow at all, makes new words and uses the old in an unfamiliar sense, has no following and is tartly reminded that "it isn't in the dictionary" -- although down to the time of the first lexicographer (Heaven forgive him!) no author ever had used a word that was in the dictionary. In the golden prime and high noon of English speech; when from the lips of the great Elizabethans fell words that made their own meaning and carried it in their very sound; when a Shakespeare and a Bacon were possible, and the language now rapidly perishing at one end and slowly renewed at the other was in vigorous growth and hardy preservation— sweeter than honey and stronger than a lion— the lexicographer was a person unknown, the dictionary a creation which his Creator had not created him to create.

God said: "Let Spirit perish into Form,"
And lexicographers arose, a swarm!
Thought fled and left her clothing, which they took,
And catalogued each garment in a book.
Now, from her leafy covert when she cries:
"Give me my clothes and I'll return," they rise
And scan the list, and say without compassion:
"Excuse us— they are mostly out of fashion."
posted by charlie don't surf at 8:17 PM on April 15, 2015 [3 favorites]


To celebrate 260 years to the day since the publication of Johnson's monumental Dictionary [...]

It is with a great sense of relief that I note this took place five years after Great Britain adopted the Gregorian Calendar. The prospect of a war between dictionary and calendar geeks is too terrible to contemplate.
posted by Joe in Australia at 10:23 PM on April 15, 2015 [2 favorites]


surrenders its right of reason and submits itself to a chronicle as if it were a statue

*raises eyebrow*
posted by Wolof at 1:18 AM on April 16, 2015


I highly recommend visiting Dr Johnson's house in London

Seconded, but be prepared for a lot of fairly narrow stairs--the house is on three or four levels.

Also keep an eye out for the statue of Johnson's cat, Hodge. It's just across the square from the house, if I'm remembering right.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 2:48 AM on April 16, 2015 [1 favorite]




according to one story, a polite lady commended the good doctor for not including swear words in the dictionary. “I see you have been looking for them,” he is said to have replied
posted by Chrysostom at 10:15 AM on April 16, 2015 [2 favorites]


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