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Written virtually single-handedly over a seven-year period by a revered dean of English letters, Johnson’s Dictionary first appeared in 1755. A remarkable monument to the vigor and variety of our language and to the genius of its author, it served as the standard dictionary for more than 150 years and formed the basis for all subsequent English dictionaries. This modern version reduces the original 2,300 pages of definitions and literary examples to a more manageable length, retaining the verbal pleasure and historical curiosity of the original. It features many entries that can no longer be found in most modern dictionaries, with intriguing definitions and examples of usage in the literature of Johnson’s time.
“[A] marvelous account” of Johnson’s towering achievement, nearly a decade of labor and linguistic fact-finding, presented by “a buoyant, zestful writer” (The Boston Globe). By the early eighteenth century, France and Italy had impressive lexicons, but there was no authoritative dictionary of English. Impelled by a mixture of national pride and commercial expedience, the prodigious polymath Samuel Johnson embraced the task, turning over the garret of his London home to the creation of his own giant dictionary. Johnson imagined that he could complete the job in three years. But the complexity of English meant that his estimate was wildly inadequate. Only after he had expended nearly a decade of his prime on the task did the dictionary finally appear—magisterial yet quirky, dogmatic but generous of spirit, and steeped in the richness of English literature. It would come to be seen as the most important British cultural monument of the eighteenth century, and its influence fanned out across Europe and throughout Britain’s colonies—including, crucially, America. Brilliantly entertaining and enlightening, Defining the World is the story of Johnson’s heroic endeavor. In alphabetically sequenced chapters, Henry Hitchings describes Johnson’s adventure—his ambition and vision, his moments of despair, the mistakes he made along the way, and his ultimate triumph.
A collection of original essays celebrating the 250th anniversary of the publication of the Dictionary.
This study by Starnes and Noyes was immediately recognized as a unique and pioneering work of scholarship and has long been the standard work on the emergence and early flowering of English lexicography. Within the last 20 years we have been witnessing a remarkable scholarly interest in the study of dictionary-making and the role played by dictionaries in the transmission and preservation of knowledge and learning. It is therefore essential to have this classic work available again to all students of linguistic history. In its new edition the book has been vastly enhanced by a lengthy and invaluable introduction by Gabriele Stein, Professor of English Linguistics in Heidelberg and author of The English Dictionary before Cawdrey (1985). In her introduction to the present volume she sets out in scholarly detail the work that has emerged since 1946, which makes this study of the English dictionary from Cawdrey to Johnson as complete as the original authors themselves would have wished.
How did a single genre of text have the power to standardise the English language across time and region, rival the Bible in notions of authority, and challenge our understanding of objectivity, prescription, and description? Since the first monolingual dictionary appeared in 1604, the genre has sparked evolution, innovation, devotion, plagiarism, and controversy. This comprehensive volume presents an overview of essential issues pertaining to dictionary style and content and a fresh narrative of the development of English dictionaries throughout the centuries. Essays on the regional and global nature of English lexicography (dictionary making) explore its power in standardising varieties of English and defining nations seeking independence from the British Empire: from Canada to the Caribbean. Leading scholars and lexicographers historically contextualise an array of dictionaries and pose urgent theoretical and methodological questions relating to their role as tools of standardisation, prestige, power, education, literacy, and national identity.
The Oxford English Dictionary is the internationally recognized authority on the evolution of the English language from 1150 to the present day. The Dictionary defines over 500,000 words, making it an unsurpassed guide to the meaning, pronunciation, and history of the English language. This new upgrade version of The Oxford English Dictionary Second Edition on CD-ROM offers unparalleled access to the world's most important reference work for the English language. The text of this version has been augmented with the inclusion of the Oxford English Dictionary Additions Series (Volumes 1-3), published in 1993 and 1997, the Bibliography to the Second Edition, and other ancillary material. System requirements: PC with minimum 200 MHz Pentium-class processor; 32 MB RAM (64 MB recommended); 16-speed CD-ROM drive (32-speed recommended); Windows 95, 98, Me, NT, 200, or XP (Local administrator rights are required to install and open the OED for the first time on a PC running Windows NT 4 and to install and run the OED on Windows 2000 and XP); 1.1 GB hard disk space to run the OED from the CD-ROM and 1.7 GB to install the CD-ROM to the hard disk: SVGA monitor: 800 x 600 pixels: 16-bit (64k, high color) setting recommended. Please note: for the upgrade, installation requires the use of the OED CD-ROM v2.0.