Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to English Dictionaries
- The Cambridge Companion to English Dictionaries
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Tables
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Chronology
- Chapter 1 Introduction
- Part I Issues in English Lexicography
- Part II English Dictionaries Throughout the Centuries
- Chapter 8 A Dictionary Ecosystem: Four Centuries of English Lexicography
- Seventeenth-Century English Dictionaries: Hard Words
- Eighteenth-Century English Dictionaries: Prescriptivism and Completeness
- Chapter 11 Recording the Most Proper and Significant Words
- Chapter 12 Samuel Johnson and the ‘First English Dictionary’
- Nineteenth-Century English Dictionaries: Descriptivism
- Twentieth and Twenty-First-Century Dictionaries
- Part III Dictionaries of English and Related Varieties
- Guide to Further Reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions to Literature
Chapter 12 - Samuel Johnson and the ‘First English Dictionary’
from Eighteenth-Century English Dictionaries: Prescriptivism and Completeness
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 September 2020
- The Cambridge Companion to English Dictionaries
- The Cambridge Companion to English Dictionaries
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Tables
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Chronology
- Chapter 1 Introduction
- Part I Issues in English Lexicography
- Part II English Dictionaries Throughout the Centuries
- Chapter 8 A Dictionary Ecosystem: Four Centuries of English Lexicography
- Seventeenth-Century English Dictionaries: Hard Words
- Eighteenth-Century English Dictionaries: Prescriptivism and Completeness
- Chapter 11 Recording the Most Proper and Significant Words
- Chapter 12 Samuel Johnson and the ‘First English Dictionary’
- Nineteenth-Century English Dictionaries: Descriptivism
- Twentieth and Twenty-First-Century Dictionaries
- Part III Dictionaries of English and Related Varieties
- Guide to Further Reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions to Literature
Summary
Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language (1755) has long had a reputation as the ‘first English dictionary’, despite the dozens of dictionaries that had appeared in the century and a half before Johnson’s. There are few ways in which Johnson’s book can be truly considered a ‘first’, since nearly all his contributions to dictionary-making had precedents in classical and European lexicography. He did, however, introduce some innovations in English lexicography, including grounding his wordlist in the works of English authors, discerning subtle shades of meaning in numbered senses, and providing extensive quotations showing the words in context. Together, these qualities made Johnson’s Dictionary, though not a chronological ‘first’, still the first English dictionary to be widely regarded as the standard of the English language.
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- The Cambridge Companion to English Dictionaries , pp. 142 - 154Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020