Dr. Johnson was a great lexicographer, but he could have used a copy editor
"I have, notwithstanding this discouragement, attempted a dictionary of the English language, which, while it was employed in the cultivation of every species of literature, has itself been hitherto neglected, suffered to spread, under the direction of chance, into wild exuberance, resigned to the tyranny of time and fashion, and exposed to the corruptions of ignorance, and caprices of innovation."
— Samuel Johnson, from the preface to A Dictionary of the English Language
I bought an abridged edition of the great book a few months ago. In honor of the book's birthday, here is a surprise I found within:
"asshead n.s. [from ass and head] One slow of apprehension; a blockhead.The remarkable thing, other than the word's beguiling punch, is that the line is not, in fact, from Hamlet, but rather from Twelfth Night, Act V, Scene i
"Will you help an asshead, and a coxcomb, an a knave, a thin-faced knave, a gull."
Shakesp. Hamlet.
© Peter Rozovsky 2014
Labels: Samuel Johnson, Shakespeare
posted by Peter Rozovsky at 8:32 PM
3 Comments:
I remember referring to SJ's dictionary when I researched an essay for graduate school (which the professor later encouraged me to submit for publication -- and it was published in The Explicator). I wanted to understand better the phrase "a month's mind" in Congreve's The Way of the World. SJ was most helpful, allowing me to understand through 18th century minds.
One thing Johnson's eighteenth-century mind was interested in was what sixteenth- and seventeenth-century minds had to say.
My one thought about eighteenth-century minds is that, more than any that had come before, they wrote for a general public. It's why Hume called himself an emissary between the worlds of learning and conversation. And it's why I can read Voltaire and Montesquieu in French.
Your headline suggested you were going to copyedit poor old Samuel. I read your post closely, but I didn't see any copyediting. Perhaps, I missed something.
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