To what extent does the dictionary of Samuel Johnson represent English as it was spoken in his day?
score:11
Johnson's dictionary is simply massive, and was completed in a really short time. It's a very influential work, being quoted by other dictionaries to this day. However, it does have some flaws.
It's missing a lot of cant words, even ones that had been in use for centuries. He also classifies a number of words as "low" when they were really just colloquial:
Johnson especially condemned “cant,” the perpetually flourishing but generally unstable language of the underworld, regarding it as “unworthy of preservation” (McAdam 1963, 23). He himself defined cant as both “(1) a corrupt dialect used by beggars and vagabonds” and “(2) a particular form of speaking peculiar to some certain class or body of men.” The first is the historical sense, while the second conforms more to modern “jargon” or “in-group vocabulary” and fashionable nonsensical exaggeration. He simply omitted a number of words in the first category, like cove for a man, beak for a judge, and fence for a receiver of stolen property, even though they had been in the language for centuries and survive to this day. In the second category he noted that frightful was “a cant word among women for anything unpleasing,” that horrid was similarly so used to mean “shocking; offensive; unpleasing,” that monstrous was a “a cant term” for “exceedingly” or “very much,” and that Billingsgate was “a cant word.” Another of his usage markers was the phrase “a low word”: among terms so categorized are cajole, fuss, job, sham, plaguy, plaguily, mishmash, swop, tiff, touchy, and uppish, which are really “colloquial” rather than “low.” His hostility was thus more toward the imprecise or affected use of words than simply to their low class or to foul language.
An Encyclopedia of Swearing
In addition, certain "bad" words are missing from his dictionary and some of the ones that are in there aren't marked as "vulgar" (warning: profanity):
In keeping with the sense of decorum of the time, Johnson did not include the grossest of the “four-letter” words (although his contemporary Nathaniel Bailey had). This omission is ironically acknowledged in the contemporary anecdote of two society ladies who “very much commended the omission of all naughty words. ‘What! my dears!’ Johnson mischievously enquired, ‘then you have been looking for them?’” (Beste, Memorials, cited in Sutherland 1975, 84). Although he excluded shit, cundum [i.e. condom], frig, swive, and bugger, he included and had direct definitions of fart (“wind from behind”), piss (“to make water”), bum and arse, simply defined as “the buttocks; the part on which we sit.” None carried any usage label such as “vulgar” or “low.” He likewise defined piddle unexpectedly in the context of eating as “to pick at table; to feed squeamishly and without appetite” and defined job as “petty, piddling work.” Lousy was given an interesting class gloss: “mean; low born; bred on the dunghill,” while bitch was simply “a name of reproach for a woman.”
ibid
He also omitted the words f**k and cunt (which were and still are two of the most offensive words in the English language).
We know that the omitted words were used in English at that time because other written sources use them (Johnson himself apparently liked using the f word). The one resource I tend to use to get an idea of how a word was used at a certain point in time is the (subscription-only) Oxford English Dictionary.
Upvote:6
To some degree, but as a guess it probably was not more than that. Per the dictionary's wiki page:
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 authors most frequently cited by Johnson include Shakespeare, Milton and Dryden.
I think we can all agree that literary quotes - particularly when they're from the likes of Shakespeare - don't necessarily reflect how people speak day in day out.
The same page has some interesting passages on how it was received and on its critic, too.
More post
- 📝 What is the best method/ readings to learn WWII
- 📝 Which company offered this aircraft interior in the 60s?
- 📝 Can anyone identify what uniform this child soldier from Switzerland c1870 is wearing?
- 📝 What nullified the Missouri Compromise?
- 📝 Why do Afro-Caribbeans have English names whereas Indo-Caribbeans still have Indian(ish) names?
- 📝 Did the American Founders Debate on the Relative Size of the Government?
- 📝 Brown glass and WWII
- 📝 When and how did classic "Italian" cuisine come to be?
- 📝 At what point did mapmaking begin to accurately reflect what we now know about the earth?
- 📝 Did the Allies punish their own war criminals?
- 📝 Were Kayanian and Pishdadian actually a thing?
- 📝 Regarding the Columbian exchange, why did the ecological factors surrounding the re-connecting of the continents favor the Old World?
- 📝 How can a megalith be dated via the C14 method?
- 📝 What does King Henry III have on his lap in this illustration from a Matthew Paris chronicle?
- 📝 Why did the Native American city of Cahokia die out?
- 📝 Exactly when was the country of Andorra founded?
- 📝 Who or what is Glohithia
- 📝 Is modern warfare inherently linked to sexual violence?
- 📝 What does a "boat crimper" do?
- 📝 Is there a good source for statistics of holocaust survivals?
- 📝 Was there any distinction between the 13 Colonies and the Canadian provinces prior to the American Revolution?
- 📝 How are historical nutrition data gathered?
- 📝 Why did the Germans not encircle and besiege Stalingrad?
- 📝 Why did Britain decide to issue perpetual bonds during Napoleonic era?
- 📝 What was a "Teuctli" in Mesoamerican history
- 📝 Help with identifying my great-grandfather's pre-WWI Cossack uniform
- 📝 "Peace, land, and bread!" Or not?
- 📝 Did the old-west style duels (as depicted in movies) actually occur?
- 📝 Why did Ivan the Terrible put a Khan to rule Astrakhan in 1554?
- 📝 What did Alexander Hamilton write about Aaron Burr's daughter?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 To what extent does the dictionary of Samuel Johnson represent English as it was spoken in his day?
- 📝 To what extent was prohibition supported by the American public?
- 📝 What was the reaction to English monarchs using the title "King of France"?
- 📝 What was the political consciousness of a 15th century English peasant?
- 📝 What was the attitude of English knights towards their longbowmen counterparts?
- 📝 What was the world population around 970 BC? Does it fit the biblical narrative?
- 📝 Are there any ideas as to what the English landscape was like before the arrival of the Angles?
- 📝 What was the first documented mention of American English different from British English?
- 📝 When and what was the maximum extent of Nationalist China?
- 📝 What does it mean: "French was a lingua franca in the Ottoman caliphal court?"
- 📝 What was the ratio of French to English speakers in Upper Canada before and after the American Revolution?
- 📝 What was the English Civil War called during the Protectorate?
- 📝 What was the extent of Kohl's government opposition to the independence of Ukraine?
- 📝 To what extent was the Cold War caused by post World War 2 economics?
- 📝 What was the extent of France's material support during the American Revolution?
- 📝 What is the extent to which Malcolm X's activism was influenced by his Muslim beliefs?
- 📝 What was the nature and extent of forced or coerced sterilization in Puerto Rico from the 1940s-1970s?
- 📝 What was the true extent of German losses at Prokhorovka?
- 📝 What was the extent of influence of James Byrnes on President Truman in the decision to use nuclear weapons?
- 📝 What was the extent of Japanese control after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs and before surrender?
- 📝 What does the following picture represent in historical context?
- 📝 In this letter from the English Civil War, what does THO stand for?
- 📝 To what extent was Christianity responsible for the dark ages of Western Europe?
- 📝 To what extent was Niccolo Machiavelli's views representative of the views in Italy's renaissance?
- 📝 What was the extent of military conscription by the German Army during World War 2?
- 📝 Did Adolf Hitler ever address the fact that his own appearance was almost an exact opposite of what he considered the ideal Aryan appearance?
- 📝 What was the historical context of the 2nd amendment to the US Constitution?
- 📝 During the breakup of the Soviet Union, on what basis was citizenship granted or withheld for each of the fifteen new republics?
- 📝 What was the typical peasant's diet like in Europe during the High Middle Ages?
- 📝 What led some people to (correctly) believe that there was no land under the ice cap at the North Pole?