Our greatest dictionary (I would say that) was planned as a comprehensive index of English, containing every word and meaning ever used. And he was not averse, as we know, to the odd subjective definition: “excise : a hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid”. But his agenda shifted from writing a dictionary showing the English language at its peak of perfection to one that captured the language as it shifted. Johnson had little truck, at least in his dictionary, with the discourse of ordinary people: all fours (“a low game of cards”) crack (“a whore in low language” and also “a boaster: this is only a low phrase”). Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language (1755) Capitalising on this, BE’s dictionary gave the book-buying public their first chance to decode the frightening language of the “sturdy beggars” (beggars legally fit to work) or the homeless, shiftless soldiers returning from the European wars: famble-cheats (“Gold-rings, or Gloves”), member-mug (“a Chamber-pot”). The streets of Britain’s big cities were teeming with rogues and vagabonds in the 17th century, as least as far as BE – the forever unknown compiler who only ever revealed these initials – and his publisher would have us believe. BE’s New Dictionary of the Canting Crew (1699) But Cawdrey made a sound beginning: they say that the first step is the hardest.Ģ. What’s worse, he wrote it for “the benefit & helpe of Ladies, Gentlewomen, or other unskilfull persons” who had neglected to enjoy a classical or grammar-school education, but who needed to know the meaning of oppilation (stopping) and saboth (rest). He left out all the easy words you’d already know (there’s some sense in that) and focused on the “hard words”. He didn’t produce what we’d think of as a dictionary. Robert Cawdrey’s A Table Alphabeticall (1604)ĭictionaries of English didn’t exist before 1604, and so schoolmaster Cawdrey was blazing a trail.

Oxford english dictionary book