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Leighton Library has a 2nd edition of 1755/6 of Dr Samuel Johnson's dictionary "A Dictionary of the English Language"
Added at 21:12 on 15 April 2024
Leighton Library has a 2nd edition of 1755/6 of Dr Samuel Johnson's dictionary "A Dictionary of the English Language" which was first published #OnThisDay 15 April 1755. It contained explanations and meanings for 40,000 different words and had taken him almost 9 years to compile. It is viewed as among the most influential dictionaries in the history of the English language - for 173 years it was viewed as the pre-eminent English dictionary. The dictionary contained a 42,773-word list, and one of Johnson's important innovations was to illustrate the meanings of his words by literary quotation, of which there are around 114,000. The dictionary is in alphabetical order according to the eighteenth-century English alphabet, where the letters I and J were considered different forms of the same letter; the same with letters U and V. As a result, in Johnson's dictionary the word jargon comes before the word idle, and vagabond comes before ultimate.
The compilation of Johnson's Dictionary was the main plot-line for an episode of Blackadder the Third where Edmund Blackadder (Rowan Atkinson) tries to confound Johnson (Robbie Coltrane) with a barrage of fabricated nonexistent words!
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