Authority Cited: Bailey
Author name and dates: Nathan (or Nathaniel) Bailey (d. 1742)
PORTRAIT
BKG Bio-tweet: Philologist and lexicographer; SJ used dictionaries as word check-list and definition, etymology source for obscure words
Categories (list of works cited – preliminary)
Author name and dates: Nathan (or Nathaniel) Bailey (d. 1742)
PORTRAIT
BKG Bio-tweet: Philologist and lexicographer; SJ used dictionaries as word check-list and definition, etymology source for obscure words
Categories (list of works cited – preliminary)
- Dictionarium Britanicum: Or a more Compleat Universal Etymological English Dictionary than any extant. Containing ... words ... from the antient British, Teutonick, Dutch Low and High, Old Saxon, German ... The second edition with numerous additions and improvements. By N. Bailey ... Assisted in the mathematical part by G. Gordon ; in the botanical by P. Miller, and in the etymological, &c. by T. Lediard, Gent. Professor of the Modern Languages in Lower Germany. 1736, London: Printed for T. Cox; abased; abatude; aptate; circinate; circination; clumsy (etym.); coom; coomb; dapatical; dar; duplicate; egret; encheason; ereptation; ereption; faceless; fream; garbel; gerfalcon; gip; gise; goatchafer; goatmilker; gome; jetsam; mundungus (citation and definition from Philips in 1773 Dict.); rash (changed to ratch in 1773 Dict.); ratoon (not in 1773 Dict.); sark (Bailey name not cited in 1773 Dict.); shabander (not in 1773 Dict.); triding (Bailey name dropped and def. expanded in 1773 Dict.); [BKG Note: About 25 Bailey citations by name in vol. 1 of the 1755 Dict., about 178 Bailey citations by name in vol.2. Wimsatt in Philosophic Words, p. 21, deduces that SJ used the 2nd edition (1736, folio); per Reddick, p. 28, Hawkins in The Life of Johnson refers to a Bailey "folio." Mildred Strubble in A Johnson Handbook, 1933, p. 120, says that 61 of the 2900 Dict. definitions under the letter "A" are derived from Bailey. (Only three of these cite Bailey by name.) From the Dict. Preface: "Many words yet stand supported only by the name of Bailey, Ainsworth, Philips, or the contracted Dict. for Dictionaries subjoined; of these I am not always certain that they are read in any book but the works of lexicographers. Of such I have omitted many, because I had never read them; and many I have inserted, because they may perhaps exist, though they have escaped my notice: they are, however, to be yet considered as resting only upon the credit of former dictionaries."]
- Bailey (no work cited)