A
D I C T I O N A R Y
OF THE
E N G L I S H L A N G U A G E :
IN WHICH
The WORDS are deduced from their ORIGINALS,
AND
ILLUSTRATED in their DIFFERENT SIGNIFICATIONS
BY
EXAMPLES from the BEST WRITERS.
TO WHICH ARE PREFIXED,
A H I S T O R Y of the L A N G U A G E,
AND
AN E N G L I S H G R A M M A R.
BY S A M U E L J O H N S O N, A. M.
IN T W O V O L U M E S.
D I C T I O N A R Y
OF THE
E N G L I S H L A N G U A G E :
IN WHICH
The WORDS are deduced from their ORIGINALS,
AND
ILLUSTRATED in their DIFFERENT SIGNIFICATIONS
BY
EXAMPLES from the BEST WRITERS.
TO WHICH ARE PREFIXED,
A H I S T O R Y of the L A N G U A G E,
AND
AN E N G L I S H G R A M M A R.
BY S A M U E L J O H N S O N, A. M.
IN T W O V O L U M E S.
- Johnson's Dictionary was commissioned by booksellers in the 1740's, and the first edition published in 1755 with a revised edition issued in 1773.
- Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) compiled the Dictionary as essentially a one-person effort.
- Definitions for over 40,000 words (many with multiple senses)
- Illustrations of word use by more than 115,000 quotations.
- Johnson himself turned the pages of about 2000 poems, essays, and books, marking for his six assistants the word and the quotation illustrating the word to be copied and alphabetically arranged.
- Johnson then provided definitions for each sense of each word (about one-third of his definitions survive today in the much larger Oxford English Dictionary).
- An Abstracted edition was also issued which contained the definitions, but not the illustrative quotations (the word list in all Abstracted editions is that of the 1755 1st Folio edition; some words considered obsolete for common usage were not included in the Abstracted edition - an example of a word omitted is exility).
LINKS to the JOHNSON DICTIONARY
1755 1st edition, Vol. 1, A-K http://hdl.handle.net/2027/ucm.5326809190 (at HathiTrust, Public Domain, Google-digitized
http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#pd-google)
1755 1st edition, Vol. 2, L-Z http://hdl.handle.net/2027/ucm.5326809207 (at HathiTrust, Public Domain, Google-digitized
http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#pd-google)
1773 4th edition, Vol. 1, A-K http://hdl.handle.net/2027/osu.32435030881114 (at HathiTrust, Public Domain, Google-digitized
http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#pd-google)
1773 4th edition, Vol. 2, L-Z http://hdl.handle.net/2027/osu.32435030881106 (at HathiTrust, Public Domain, Google-digitized
http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#pd-google)
Abstracted edition: 1792 10th edition, A-Z https://hdl.handle.net/2027/nyp.33433070243104 (at HathiTrust, Public Domain, Google-digitized http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#pd-google)
An electronic searchable edition of the 1755 Johnson Dictionary in modern orthography is now online at https://johnsonsdictionaryonline.com/ supported by the University of Central Florida under the direction of Beth Rapp Young.
1755 1st edition, Vol. 1, A-K http://hdl.handle.net/2027/ucm.5326809190 (at HathiTrust, Public Domain, Google-digitized
http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#pd-google)
1755 1st edition, Vol. 2, L-Z http://hdl.handle.net/2027/ucm.5326809207 (at HathiTrust, Public Domain, Google-digitized
http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#pd-google)
1773 4th edition, Vol. 1, A-K http://hdl.handle.net/2027/osu.32435030881114 (at HathiTrust, Public Domain, Google-digitized
http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#pd-google)
1773 4th edition, Vol. 2, L-Z http://hdl.handle.net/2027/osu.32435030881106 (at HathiTrust, Public Domain, Google-digitized
http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#pd-google)
Abstracted edition: 1792 10th edition, A-Z https://hdl.handle.net/2027/nyp.33433070243104 (at HathiTrust, Public Domain, Google-digitized http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#pd-google)
An electronic searchable edition of the 1755 Johnson Dictionary in modern orthography is now online at https://johnsonsdictionaryonline.com/ supported by the University of Central Florida under the direction of Beth Rapp Young.