Скачать или смотреть 15th April 1755: Samuel Johnson publishes ‘A Dictionary of the English Language’ in London

Historians broadly agree that the first true dictionary was created by Sir Thomas Elyot who published a book called a Dictionary in 1538 while working for Henry VIII. Johnson’s later work far superseded this by being the most comprehensive and detailed collection of the English language to date. Johnson’s dictionary was the ‘go to’ reference for the English language until the publication of the first Oxford English Dictionary in 1888 – 173 years after Johnson published his.

Johnson’s finished dictionary contained 42,773 words, each of which featured a number of notes on their specific usage. Perhaps most astounding is the fact that Johnson wrote the entire dictionary himself, taking 9 years to do so, and earning the modern equivalent of £210,000 British pounds for his efforts. His biographer, Walter Jackson Bate, described the work as ‘one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship’.

Despite the impact of Johnson’s dictionary, it created a number of problems that have been inherited by the modern English language. Most significantly, Johnson’s spellings have become the standard format despite there being a number of inconsistencies in his use of particular letter orders and sounds.

Johnson himself was well aware of the shortcomings of his work and the fact that he would face such criticisms. In a letter to an Italian lexicographer in 1784 he stated that ‘dictionaries are like watches: the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.’