#lexicographers

Happy National Dictionary Day!

Although the day was introduced to honor the birthday of American lexicographer Noah Webster, we are more interested in his innovative predecessor Samuel Johnson (1709-1784). Johnson was an English writer with credits as a poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic, sermonist, biographer, editor, and lexicographer. In 1746, he was approached by a group of publishers to create an authoritative English dictionary and agreed, boasting he could complete the dictionary within three years. In the end, he single-handedly completed the task within eight years utilizing only clerical assistance. 

Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language was first published in London by noted Scottish printer and publisher William Strahan on April 15, 1755. While certainly not the first dictionary, it was groundbreaking in its documentation of the English lexicon providing not only words and their definitions, but examples of their use. Johnson accomplished this by illustrating the meanings of words through literary quotes, often citing Shakespeare, Milton, and Dryden. He also introduced lighthearted humor into some of his definitions, most notably describing a lexicographer as “a writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge that busies himself in tracing the original and detailing the signification of words”. Of equal amusement, oats are defined as “a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people”. 

A Dictionary of the English Language was published in two volumes with volume one containing A-K and volume two L-Z. Its pages were 46 cm tall and 51 cm wide, and it is said that outside of a few special editions of the Bible no book of this size and bulk had been set to type and that no bookseller could print it without help. Johnson’s dictionary was the pre-eminent dictionary for over 100 years until the completion of the Oxford English Dictionary in 1884. Despite some criticism about his etymology and orthoepic guidelines, Johnson’s dictionary was tremendously influential in its methodology for how dictionaries should be constructed and entries presented, casting a shadow over all future dictionaries and lexicographers. 

Several of the words in Johnson's dictionary were painstakingly defined. "Take" has 134 definitions running 8,000 words over 5 pages.

Woodcut tailpieces adorn the dictionary interspersed between letters.

Special Collections holds a facsimile reproduction of Johnson's dictionary, published in 1967 by AMS Press of New York.

View other Milestone Monday posts.

An interesting article about a very extensive Latin dictionary in the New York Times. Excerpt: 

When German researchers began working on a new Latin dictionary in the 1890s, they thought they might finish in 15 or 20 years.

In the 125 years since, the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (T.L.L.) has seen the fall of an empire, two world wars and the division and reunification of Germany. In the meantime, they are up to the letter R.

This is not for lack of effort. Most dictionaries focus on the most prominent or recent meaning of a word; this one aims to show every single way anyone ever used it, from the earliest Latin inscriptions in the sixth century B.C. to around A.D. 600. The dictionary’s founder, Eduard Wölfflin, who died in 1908, described entries in the T.L.L. not as definitions, but “biographies” of words.

The first entry, for the letter A, was published in 1900. The T.L.L. is expected to reach its final word — “zythum,” an Egyptian beer — by 2050. A scholarly project of painstaking exactness and glacial speed, it has so far produced 18 volumes of huge pages with tiny text, the collective work of nearly 400 scholars, many of them long since dead. The letters Q and N were set aside, because they begin too many difficult words, so researchers will have to go back and work on those, too.

A linguistics book for the rest of us

For several years now I’ve been looking for a book about linguistics that doesn’t assume I know diddly squat about the subject. I tried Lakoff and Johnson’s Metaphors We Live By. I tried Pinker’s The Language Instinct. In desperation I got a copy of the Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics. Not one of them was what I wanted or needed.

I ordered a copy of Steve Kleinedler’s Is English Changing?because…

A delightful oral history of Words of the Year from Kory Stamper. Excerpt: 

It’s an odd thing to be part of a national end-of-year phenomenon, but I was, for almost a decade: I was one of the editors involved in choosing and publicizing Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year. For a lexicographer who spent most of her time wrestling with the vagaries of how to define “blue plate special,” helping to pick the WOTY — everyone pronounces it “woady” — was an adventure filled with booby-traps and pitfalls.

On the one hand, choose something that makes a big, bold statement about the year in review, one that says the dictionary has its finger on the pulse of the people. On the other hand, choose something that isn’t too negative or too political or too naive or too arch. [...]

We needed the professional word nerds — the ones affiliated with academic institutions and dictionary companies — who, against the odds, managed to turn WOTY announcements into annual news events. Herewith, an oral history of the Word of the Year, told in the words of the people who know it best.

Fiat Lex is a new podcast about dictionaries by people who write them, featuring Steve Kleinedler and‏ Kory Stamper (whose book and blog I’ve talked about several times). From the description of the first episode: 

In our first episode, we: 

blow your minds by telling you that "the dictionary" doesn't exist;

talk about how new words get into dictionaries (not by petition, so STOP ASKING) and how that's not as straightforward a process as you would think;

explain how lexicographers find new words, which sometimes involves beer and diapers; 

touch on how words get taken out of dictionaries, and how that's not as straightforward a process as you would think, either. Assuming you think about such things. (Who are we kidding here?)

BONUS FEATURES! Kory spells a word aloud correctly, which will probs never happen again; Steve channels Chumley the Walrus and then goes right into fancy linguist talk about velars and coronals; Tennessee represents!