Posted on 04/17/2005 4:53:10 AM PDT by infocats
Two hundred fifty years ago, on April 15, 1755, Samuel Johnson published the first edition of his Dictionary of the English Language, compiled and written almost wholly by himself. It appeared in London in two folio volumes. Like most dictionaries, there is a rigorous serenity in the look of its pages. The language has been laid out in alphabetical order. The etymologies and definitions bristle with italics and abbreviations. The quotations that exemplify the meanings of the words present a bottomless fund of good sense and literary beauty.
But I wonder whether anyone has ever had a more dynamic or volatile sense of the language than Johnson did. We tend to remember him as an older man, grown heavy, his face weighed down as much by indolence as industry. But in April 1755 he was not yet 46. With the publication of his dictionary, he returned from his researches into the English language the way an explorer returns from the North Pole, with a sense of having seen a terrain that others can see only through his account of what he found there. Instead of a wilderness of ice, he faced what he called, in his preface to the dictionary, "the boundless chaos of a living speech." Instead of voyages into Arctic waters, he talks of "fortuitous and unguided excursions into books."
It's tempting to think of a lexicographer in terms of the dictionary he produces, and Johnson's is certainly one of the great philological accomplishments of any literary era. But it's just as interesting to think of what the dictionary does to the man. Johnson says, quite simply, "I applied myself to the perusal of our writers." But reading "our writers" to find the materials for a dictionary is unlike any other kind of reading I can imagine. It would atomize every text, forsake the general sense of a passage for the particular meaning of individual words. It would be like hiking through quicksand, around the world.
Johnson lived in turmoil, and the sense of vigor he so often projected was, if nothing else, a way of keeping order in a world that threatened to disintegrate into disorder every day. And what was the disorder of London to the chaos of the language? "Sounds," he wrote, "are too volatile and subtile for legal restraints; to enchain syllables, and to lash the wind, are equally the undertakings of pride." Johnson published his dictionary not as the conqueror of the language but as the person who knew best how unconquerable it really is.
Y dat wuz mose infomativ an inerestin. ;)
I've been told that there were some bootleg copies in circulation at that time which had a frontispiece of that venerable gentleman with his finger up his nose. It was entitled, "Johnson's Illustrated Pictionary."
A little nit picking here. The earliest mention of the discovery of the existence of atoms I can find was by John Dalton in 1802.
The quote appears to be from the dictionary author. Was Samuel Johnson really talking about "atomizing' in 1755?
The word Atom has been around for quite a long time, actually I believe it is Greek in origin, ancient Greece that is. The word (just like many in the English language) has taken on newer forms due to new discoveries.
LOL!
Though no linguistic expert myself, I see the time coming when all riting will be in pitchers like dis ... ;)
In fact I do it all the time by using ... ;)
"Atomize", to render into small (not elemental) particles, would be a usage not unfamiliar in the good Doctor's time.
Similarly, "icon" has existed long before computers :)
Good catch, though. Good thinking.
From Merriam-Webster.com, the etymology of "Atom"....
Etymology: Middle English, from Latin ATOMUS, from Greek ATOMOS, from ATOMOS indivisible, from A- + TEMNEIN to cut.
The word ATOM appears in the writings of the philosophers of Classical Greece.
Them Egypt-folks was so advanced; just ask Mr. Farrakhan.
Now I need to know how you did that.
I guess a trip to the HTML sandbox is in order.
I am referring to how you made the word smaller and smaller and of course it won't reproduce in this response unless I know how you did it. Sort of a catch 22.
< font size=-1>vey < font size=-2>vey < font size=-3> small
< /font>< /font>< /font>
That last bit...all 3 of them...is imprtant. Otherwise the rest of your post will be vey vey small
:)
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