It's Samuel Johnson's birthday today (he was born on 18 September 1709), and Google UK is celebrating the occasion with a Doodle. Do click on the link, if you use google.co.uk (the sentence beginning 'Explore 25 odd and wonderful entries ...'), which takes you to this page.
My own favourite odd and wonderful things about Samuel Johnson's dictionary include the definition for network: any thing reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections. And for cough: a convulsion of the lungs, vellicated by some sharp serosity. And also the definition of monsieur: a term of reproach for a Frenchman.
Johnson's dictionary tells you as much about Johnson the man as about the English language. He leaves readers in no doubt about his views, for instance at the entry for anthropophaginian: a ludicrous word, formed by Shakespeare from anthropophagi, for the sake of a formidable sound. According to Johnson, clever and abominable were 'low' words (see this recent post of mine).
There are also several definitions like these: etch - a country word of which I know not the meaning; trolmydames - of this word I know not the meaning. Etch as a noun is in the OED as a variant form of eddish, stubble or a stubble-field; Trolmydames appears in a citation at the troll-madam entry as a variant; it was “a game played by ladies, resembling bagatelle”.
The dictionary is divided into 24 sections, not 26. Words beginning I and J, and U and V, are mixed up together. So, the entry after vulture and vulturine is uvula, and the entry after jam is iambick. Covey comes before the aforementioned entry cough.
Boswell describes meeting Johnson for the first time in his biography of the great man: “Mr Johnson is a man of a most dreadful appearance. He is a very big man, is troubled with sore eyes, the Palsy and the King’s evil. He is very slovenly in his dress & speaks with a most uncouth voice". Hester Thrale, Johnson's good friend and confidante, said of Johnson that he had “a roughness in his manner which subdued the saucy and terrified the weak”. The writer Oliver Goldsmith confirmed this second point when he said “There is no arguing with Johnson, for when his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the butt end of it”. Everyone forgot about Johnson's appearance and manner once he had opened his mouth, however. He was a great conversationalist, and was in demand as a guest at the best dinner tables in London. He loved to converse, and once said of an evening he had spent, “We had talk enough, but no conversation”.
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