At the time, Johnson was a hack, a poorly paid professional writer, able to turn out 10,000 words a day for the Gentleman's Magazine and other publications. His speciality was writing semi-fictionalised reports of Parliamentary debates. Johnson worked in the world of Grub Street, which he defined in his Dictionary as "the name of a street near Moorfields in London, much inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries, and temporary poems; whence any mean production is called grubstreet".

The idea to produce an English dictionary came from a group of London booksellers, who approached Johnson with the proposal. He welcomed the challenge to create a book which would have lasting status, unlike his usual "grubstreet" work. Believing that "languages are the pedigrees of nations", he also saw the task as a patriotic duty.

It took Johnson nine years of hard work to complete his Dictionary, which was finally published in 1755. A two-volume work, it contained 2,300 pages, with more than 42,000 entries.

Refining the language

Johnson said that his aim was "to refine our language to grammatical purity", and so his dictionary was prescriptive. More than 800 words are damned as "barbarous", "vile", "improper" or "low". His definition of "shabby" describes it as "a word that has crept into conversation... but ought not to be admitted into the language".

 
The book includes around 118,000 literary quotations, selected to illustrate the meanings of words. Johnson chose these from works written between the 1580s and the 1660s, explaining that he viewed the writings of this period as "the wells of English undefiled, as the pure sources of genuine diction". Many of the quotations were "improved" by Johnson.

Johnson's eccentricities

Johnson's definitions are often eccentric, revealing his many strong prejudices. He defined oats as "a grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people". This reflects Johnson's low opinion of the Scots, despite his friendship with the proudly Scottish James Boswell.

One problem with the Dictionary is Johnson's use of words which are more difficult to understand than the terms being defined. So Johnson defined network as "any thing reticulated, or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections". A cough is "a convulsion of the lungs, vellicated by some sharp serosity"!

Johnson's etymologies - explanations of the origins of words - were usually wild guesses. So he explained peacock as derived from "peak cock, from the tuft of feathers on its head". In fact, the word is based on the Old English bird name pea, in turn derived from the Latin pava.

On its publication, the book was celebrated by the actor David Garrick in a poem contrasting Johnson's solo achievement with the 40 "Immortals" of the Académie Francaise, in charge of the French dictionary:

Talk of war with a Briton, he'll boldly advance
That one English soldier can beat ten of France.
Should we alter the boast from the sword to the pen,
The odds are still greater, still greater our men....
First Milton and Shakespeare, like gods in the fight
Have put their whole epic and drama to flight....
And Johnson well-armed like a hero of yore,
Has beat forty French and will beat forty more!

Soon after publication, the Dictionary assumed an authoritative status and, for the next 150 years, when any English speaker referred to "the dictionary", they meant Johnson's book. Its very flaws and eccentricities make it the most entertaining of all dictionaries to dip into. Robert Burchfield, editor of the Supplement to the O.E.D., wrote, "In the whole tradition of language and literature the only dictionary compiled by a writer of first rank is that of Dr Johnson."

James Murray, first editor of the O.E.D. was another great admirer of the dictionary, and kept a copy of it open on his desk as he worked. Around 1,700 of Johnson's definitions were included in the O.E.D., simply marked with a "J".

To find out more about the book, visit the University of Birmingham's online:

Johson Dictionary Project