Name: A dictionary of the English language
ISBN: 9780394749051

What Hacker News says

AaronFrielMay 2014

One of my favorite works of literature is the preamble to A Dictionary of the English Language, by one of the first lexicographers, Samuel Johnson. Perhaps I'm so fond of it because I can beat his prose over the head of prescriptivists and Francophones in an argument, but whatever the reason, I find it beautiful and captivating.

Here's a passage (joined from two paragraphs) describing the futility of prescribing language or fixing it with a work as diminutive as his dictionary:

    When we see men grow old and die at a certain time one after another, from
    century to century, we laugh at the elixir that promises to prolong life to a
    thousand years; and with equal justice may the lexicographer be derided, who
    being able to produce no example of a nation that has preserved their words
    and phrases from mutability, shall imagine that his dictionary can embalm his
    language, and secure it from corruption and decay, that it is in his power to
    change sublunary nature, or clear the world at once from folly, vanity, and
    affectation.
    
    With this hope, however, academies have been instituted, to guard the avenues
    of their languages, to retain fugitives, and repulse intruders; but their
    vigilance and activity have hitherto been vain; sounds are too volatile and
    subtile for legal restraints; to enchain syllables, and to lash the wind, are
    equally the undertakings of pride, unwilling to measure its desires by its
    strength.

I suppose early lexicographers had to become a master of language themselves - or persuade themselves it was so. If they didn't, how could they presuppose to describe the entirety of their language in such a tome?

The full text of the preface can be found here: http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/preface.html

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thaumasiotesApr 2022

Reading from your second link, Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language:

> ORDER. s [ordo, Lat.] 1. Method; regular disposition. 2. Established process. 3. Proper state. 4. Regularity; settled mode. 5. Mandate; precept; command. 6. Rule; regulation. 7. Regular government. [8-12: other senses not obviously relevant here] 13. Measures; care. [14: a sense specific to architecture]

(Italics are my emphasis; I've highlighted every word related to "regulated". "s" after the headword seems to indicate a noun.)

> To ORDER, v. a. [from the noun/] 1. To regulate; to adjust; to manage; to conduct. 2. To manage; to procure. 3. To methodize; to depose fitly. 4. To direct, to command. [5: one other irrelevant sense]

Here we see that "regulate", "adjust", "manage", and "conduct" are all synonymous. We see that the concept of "order" has special senses relating to organization and to command, as is also true in English today. The only mention of the verb "regulate", which I discussed in my first comment, clearly indicates that it is used in the sense of organizing. There is a special application of this or a related concept to government, "regular" government, noted in sense 7.

"To REGULATE" is given two senses:

> To REGULATE. v. a. [regula, Lat.] 1. To adjust by rule or method. 2. To direct.

And REGULATION is:

> REGULATION. s. [from regulate.] 1. The act of regulating. 2. Method; the effect of regulation.

This is interesting in that it indicates that (in sense 2) "regulation" is a state of being, like "order", resulting from being regulated. The modern sense of the word, referring to a formal rule, is not listed in this dictionary. However, that appears to be an oversight by Johnson: here are the relevant senses of REGULAR:

> REGULAR. a. [regularis, Lat.] 1. Agreeable to rule; consistent with the mode prescribed. 2. Governed by strict regulations.

I don't see an interpretation of "regulations" as used here other than "formal rules". This is what was meant by "regular government" or "order" - a government itself subject to strict regulations. Sense 1 is so unclearly worded that I've included it in case it's relevant, but I believe it's just the sense in which "played" is the regular past tense of "play", while "went" is the irregular past tense of "go". This "regular" means "conforming to a rule".

And:

> REGULARITY. s. [regularité, Fr.] 1. Agreeableness to rule. 2. Method; certain order.

What does "rule" mean?

> RULE. s. [regula, Lat.] 1. Government; empire; sway; supreme command. [2. a ruler] 3. Canon; precept by which the thoughts or actions are directed. 4. Regularity; propriety of behaviour.

> To RULE. v. a. [from the noun.] 1. To govern; to controll; to manage with power and authority 2. To manage. 3. To settle as by rule.

One word has come up in almost everything we've looked up:

> METHOD. s. [methode, Fr. μέθοδ@.] The placing of several things, or performing several operations in the most convenient order.

This isn't especially clear, but there are related entries:

> METHODICAL. a. [methodique, Fr. from method.] Ranged or proceeding in due or just order.

> To METHODISE v. a. [from method.] To regulate; to dispose in order.

This states explicitly that to regulate something is to bring order to it. The sense survives in modern English in a related word, regularize; that distinction was not drawn in the eighteenth century.

I'll continue in a reply to my own comment, because I'm about to shift topics.

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karaterobotFeb 2022

The first thing that came to mind was the Roud Folk Song Index, a database of 250,000 songs all researched and compiled by a former librarian in the 70s, as a labor of love (and scholarly dedication, I guess).

And then Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language, a dictionary researched and written by a single man. He thought it would take three years, ended up taking nine years. All the more impressive for the reckless confidence paid off by diligence.

The famous anecdote Boswell reported about Dr. Johnson's confidence in his own abilities as a scholar:

>ADAMS: But the French Academy, which consists of forty members, took forty years to compile their Dictionary.

>JOHNSON: Sir, thus it is. This is the proportion. Let me see; forty times forty is sixteen hundred. As three to sixteen hundred, so is the proportion of an Englishman to a Frenchman.

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MordisquitosNov 2021

Samuel Johnson's first dictionary of the English Language, published in 1755, gave the definition of swan as “The ſwan is a large waterfowl, that has a long and very ſtranght neck, and is very white, excepting when it is young [...]”,

Following your logic, I have just proven that black swans do not exist.

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mrobApr 2018

Changing "ſ" to "s" is just changing the font, so I don't have any problem with that. Changing "v" to "u" is arguably also changing the font, if you assume that the original text had two visually identical but semantically different "v"s.

I do think removing the apostrophe from "'phone" changes the meaning, because it implies a different relationship to the technology. It's like writing "internet" without the capital I. This is still considered incorrect, but it's becoming more common, and I think eventually it will replace "Internet". The loss of the capital letter, just like the loss of the apostrophe, shows the technology fading into the background and losing its novelty.

And the works of Shakespeare are an extreme example, being older than most works on the site. I'd prefer the original spelling, but for works of that age I can understand changing it. I'd set the publication of Johnson's "A Dictionary of the English Language" (1755) (or a few years later) as the cut-off point for spelling changes.

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dalkeDec 2014

And has for a long time. The 1818 version of Johnson's "A Dictionary of the English Language" has "an unexpected legacy; any unexpected advantage", with no negative connotations. https://books.google.com/books?id=zsI_AQAAMAAJ&pg=PT1100&dq=...

The original 1755 version only had "Fruit blown down from the tree" - http://johnsonsdictionaryonline.com/?page_id=7070&i=2282 . Etymonline says 'Figurative sense of "unexpected acquisition" is recorded from 1540s' - http://etymonline.com/index.php?term=windfall&allowed_in_fra... .

It's also used in the 1800s as the tornado track. See https://books.google.com/books?id=1GQJAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA324&dq=w... .

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