A History of English Language

A history of the english language 256
would they fail, in time, of obtaining general authority, and permanence, from the
sanction of custom, founded on good sense.” 22
The two greatest needs, still felt and most frequently lamented, were for a dictionary
and a grammar. Without these there could be no certainty in diction and no standard of
correct construction. The one was supplied in 1755 by Johnson’s Dictionary, the other in
the course of the next half-century by the early grammarians.
197. Johnson’s Dictionary.
The publication in 1755 of A Dictionary of the English Language, by Samuel Johnson,
A.M., in two folio volumes, was hailed as a great achievement. And it was justly so
regarded, when we consider that it was the work of one man laboring almost without
assistance for the short space of seven years. True, it had its defects. Judged by modern
standards it was painfully inadequate. Its etymologies are often ludicrous. It is marred in
places by prejudice and caprice. Its definitions, generally sound and often discriminating,
are at times truly Johnsonian. 23 It includes a host of words with a very questionable right
to be regarded as belonging to the language. 24 But it had positive virtues. It exhibited the
English vocabulary much more fully than had ever been done before. It offered a
spelling, fixed, even if sometimes badly, that could be accepted as standard. It supplied
thousands of quotations illustrating the use of words, so that, as Johnson remarked in his
preface, where his own explanation is inadequate “the sense may easily be collected
entire from the examples.”
It is the first purpose of a dictionary to record usage. But even today, when the
scientific study of language makes us much less disposed to pass judgment upon, and
particularly to condemn, its phenomena, many people look upon the editor of a dictionary
as a superior kind of person with the right to legislate in such matters as the pronunciation
and use of words. This attitude was well-nigh universal in Johnson’s day and was not
repugnant to the lexicographer himself. In many ways he makes it clear that he accepts
the responsibility as part of his task. “Every language,” he says in the preface, “has its
anomalies, which, though inconvenient, and in themselves once unnecessary, must be
tolerated among the imperfections of human things, and which require only to be
registred, that they may not be increased, and ascertained, that they may not be
confounded: but every language has likewise its improprieties and absurdities, which it is
22
T.Sheridan, British Education, pp. 370–71.
23
Network: Any thing reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the
intersections. Cough: A convulsion of the lungs, vellicated by some sharp serosity.
24
Webster was severe in his judgment of the work on this score: “From a careful examination of
this work and its effect upon the language, I am inclined to believe that Johnson’s authority has
multiplied instead of reducing the number of corruptions in the English Language. Let any man of
correct taste cast his eye on such words as denominable, opiniatry, ariolation, assation, ataraxy,
clancular, comminuible, conclusible, detentition, deuteroscopy, digladiation, dignotion, cubiculary,
discubitory, exolution, exenterate, incompossible, incompossibility, indigitate, etc., and let him say
whether a dictionary which gives thousands of such terms, as authorized English words, is a safe
standard of writing.” Cf. Stanley Rypins, “Johnson’s Dictionary Reviewed by His
Contemporaries,” PQ, 4 (1925), 281–86. Denominable, detentition, exolution, exenterate were not
in the original edition.