A Dictionary of the English Language

The Dictionary of the English Language is a book authored by Samuel Johnson Dictionary of English. It appeared in 1755 and is still regarded as one of the most influential dictionaries in the history of the English language.

Formation

The Frühneuenglische Vowel Shift in the 15th and 16th centuries led not only to a radical change in the phonology also a very inconsistent orthography. Johnson's Dictionary was not last out of the desire for a reliable reference work on the spelling and pronunciation. In June 1746 Johnson therefore closed with a group of London booksellers from a contract and made a commitment for 1575 pounds to write such a dictionary. From the initially estimated working time of three years, nine years before the book was finally published on 15 April 1755.

Work

Johnson's intention was to give an overview of his views on the key concepts of English in the 18th century. A complete inventory of the former vocabulary was not his aim. Nevertheless, the dictionary lists 42 773 words. In addition to information on the spelling, pronunciation and meaning Johnson became the first English lexicographer about 114,000 literary quotes as evidence to. He relied mainly on William Shakespeare, John Milton and John Dryden.

In contrast to the modern lexicography, which aims at a value-neutral as possible a description of the lemmas, Johnson grabbed you back on aphorisms and humorous tips. For example, in the explanation of Oat ( Oat ): "a grain Which in England is generated rally givenName to horses, but in Scotland supports the people" ( a grain, which is fed in England to horses, in Scotland, however, to the population ). He took himself out of his ridicule not: Lexicographer ( lexicographer ): "a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge ... " ( a writer of dictionaries, a harmless workhorse ... )

Its etymological information is insufficient for today's perspective; the particulars of the debate rather coarse: " Cough: A convulsion of the lungs, vellicated by some sharp serosity. It is pronounced coff ". As a child of his time Johnson takes a prescriptive point of view. The promotion of a "good", befitting their vocabulary was more important to him than the neutral compilation of vocabulary. Even otherwise, he represented a linguistically conservative approach. To be found in the Dictionary of the English Language, numerous ancient spellings such as " olde " instead of the more modern "old ", as some 70 years later appears in the Dictionary of Noah Webster.

Although Johnson's approach does not correspond to the currently used descriptive, ie purely descriptive approach, one has to the author but credit, that he was a guide for at least linguistic overcoming social boundaries with his work. And not least of historical linguistics, which he first made ​​classification of the lemmas in categories such as " slang " or " colloquial " very interesting; allows it but an understanding of the English in the 18th century, which is not readily available otherwise.

Despite the aforementioned criticisms of 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 was pointing the way to the appearance of the Oxford English Dictionary, the end of the 19th century.