Samuel Johnson published his Dictionary of the English Language
On this day · 15 April 1755
On April 15, 1755, after nearly nine years of work, Johnson released the dictionary that would govern English for a century.
On April 15, 1755, Samuel Johnson published A Dictionary of the English Language, the most influential English dictionary before the Oxford English Dictionary. It had taken him close to nine years, working with a small team of copyists from a house on London’s Gough Square.
The finished book was enormous — a two-volume folio defining roughly 40,000 words. Its breakthrough was method: Johnson illustrated meanings with about 114,000 quotations drawn from the best writers, fixing usage by example rather than decree.
It was also unmistakably personal. He defined “lexicographer” as “a writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge,” and “oats” as a grain that in England feeds horses but in Scotland the people.
Roughly 2,000 copies were printed in the first edition, sold at the steep price of four pounds, ten shillings.
Johnson’s definitions remained the standard reference for English for more than a century.
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