There remains a stubborn perception that somehow Noah Webster wrote the first American dictionary. This is actually not true.  There were many dictionaries written in the 18th Century and the premier edition was written by Samuel Johnson.

In June 1746, Samuel Johnson signed the contract with a group of booksellers in London to write A Dictionary of the English Language. At the time, he was a penniless and in imminent danger of being sent to debtors’ prison, but now the substantial fee of 1,500 guineas enabled him to rent a comfortable house off Fleet Street and hire a staff of assistants.   Over the next eight years, he scoured books dating back to the 16th century, drawing heavily from Nathan Bailey’s 1730 Dictionarium Britannicum (written in Latin) and John Kersey’s 1708 Dictionarium Anglo-Britannicum (actually a translation guide for Latin to English).  The work took more than ten years and the dictionary was published 1755. 

Unsuccessful as a schoolmaster in his hometown of Lichfield, Staffordshire (the few students he had were put off by his “oddities of manner and uncouth gesticulations”–most likely the effects of Tourette syndrome), Johnson moved to London in 1737 to make a living as an author and editor. After a decade of writing for magazines and struggling with debt, he accepted an invitation from bookseller Robert Dodsley to compile a definitive dictionary of the English language. Dodsley solicited the patronage of the Earl of Chesterfield, offered to publicize the dictionary in his various periodicals to make the book a popular success.

Johnson’s work was both monumental and extremely efficient.  In other European countries, dictionaries had been assembled by large committees. The 40 “immortals” who made up the Académie française took 55 years to produce their Dictionnaire Francais. The Florentine Accademia della Crusca labored 30 years on its Vocabolario. In contrast, working with just six assistants (and never more than four at a time), Johnson completed his dictionary in about eight years.  Johnson’s goals were to rationalize spellings, trace etymologies, offer guidance on pronunciation, and preserve the purity, and ascertain the meaning of The English Language. “One great end of this undertaking,” Johnson wrote, “is to fix the English language.”  With time, Johnson’s conservatism—the desire to ‘fix’ the language gave way to a radical awareness of language’s mutability.

Johnson deliberately omitted certain words for reasons of propriety, he did admit a number of “vulgar phrases,” including bum, fart, piss, and turd.  When two ladies at Court queried him for having left out “naughty” words, he replied, “What, my dears! Then you have been looking for them?”  Johnson also did not hesitate to pass judgment on words he considered socially unacceptable. On his list of barbarisms were such familiar words as budge, con, gambler, ignoramus, shabby, trait, and volunteer (used as a verb). And Johnson could be opinionated in other ways, as in his famous (though not original) definition of oats: “a grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.”  He also provided a delightful selection of verbal curios.  belly-god is listed as “one who makes a god of his belly.” Amatorculist is “a little insignificant lover.” The insulting term fopdoodle is listed as “a fool; an insignificant wretch.” As are Bedpresser –“a heavy lazy fellow”, and pricklouse “a word of contempt for a tailor”.

Some entries in Johnson’s dictionary have gained notoriety, especially those where Johnson expresses his own views and interests.  Excise is defined as a “hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid.”  Lunch is simply “as much food as one’s hand can hold.”  Rust is defined as “the red desquamation of old iron.” Cough is “a convulsion of the lungs, vellicated by some sharp serosity.” Rant is defined as “high sounding language unsupported by dignity of thought,” and hope is “an expectation indulged with pleasure.” And, not missing the opportunity for self-deprecation, he lists Lexicographer, as defined as “harmless drudgery.”

The final product was two volumes with approaching 43,000 entries and 140,000 definitions in 2,300 pages. Johnson’s clear definitions, his concentration on ordinary everyday words and his principle that a word means what it is used to mean by the best writers in the language made the book the “go to” standard for English until it was supplanted by the Oxford English Dictionary in 1928.

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