BREAKING NEWS

So I was searching the Yale library system today out of curiosty, just to see whether we might have an original copy of Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language.  It turns out we do have some incomplete sections of the first edition in Beinecke, our rare books and manuscripts library.  But more surprisingly, it turns out we have a complete of the dictionary's second edition (1755) just sitting in the stacks of our main lending library!   This is a very big deal, because this book is worth thousands of dollars.  Naturally, I went to go check it out.  It's a beautiful book printed in two folio-sized volumes--in remarkably good condition for its age.  Apparently Yale doesn't even know they just have it sitting it in the stacks, waiting to be perused by students.  Anyway, this is great news for amateur lexicographers and general lovers of old books with access to the Yale library system, because it means we can go in and commune with Johnson's tome in the deep recesses of Sterling Memorial Library stacks whenever we want.  Here are some pictures of me doing just that!

The last image is of the entry for the letter "X."  As I mentioned before, Johnson included no words in his dictionary that began with the letter.  The text reads: "X is a letter which, though found in Saxon words, begins no word in the English language."

So I've transcribed some of the Dictionary's preface that I thought was particularly interesting (Remember when McKean told us to read the frontmatter?  It turns out she was right!).  It gives us some insight into Johnson's worldview, as well as his philosophy of lexicography (prescriptivism):

"In adjusting the ORTHOGRAPHY, which has been to this time unsettled and fortuitous, I found it necessary to distinguish those irregularities that are inherent in our tongue, and perhaps coeval with it, from others which the ignorance or negligence of later writers has produced.  Every language has its anomalies, which, though inconvenient, and in themselves at once necessary, must be tolerated among the imperfections of human things, and which require only to be registered, that they may not be increased, and ascertained, that they may not be confounded: but every language has likewise its improprieties and absurdities, which it is the duty of the lexicographer to correct or proscribe.

As language was at its beginning merely oral, all words of necessary or common use were spoken before they were written; and while they were unfixed by any visible signs, must have been spoken with great diversity, as we now observe those that cannot read catch sounds imperfectly and utter them negligently.  When this wild and barbarous jargon was first reduced to an alphabet, every penman endeavored to express, as he could, the sounds which he was accustomed to pronounce or to receive, and vitiated in writing such words as were already vitiated in speech.  The powers of letters, when they were applied to a new language, must have been vague and unsettled, and therefore different hands would exhibit the same sound by different combinations."

 

Judging by the second paragraph, it seems to me Johnson is one of the first scholars to identify the phenomenon of the eggcorn!  As he says: "those that cannot read catch sounds imperfectly and utter them negligently."  He cites illiteracy as the root of this problem, since our only knowledge of a word, then, is what we hear, which can often be wrong--either we mishear or the person we hear the word from has misheard and repeated what he thought to be correct.  My third graders are familiar with this problem; it's the crux of the playground game "Telephone."  Naturally, with widespread illiteracy, Johnson's lifetime is the heyday of the eggcorn!  Anyway, even in this short passage, Johnson's description takes on a literary tone.  I just love how he calls our language before writing and standardization "wild and barbarous jargon."  If you can get your hands on a copy--even a later edition--it really is worth a look!

--Amy