THE BOOKMAN

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 339, 26 April 1928, Page 14

T HE BOOKMAN

About Dictionaries And Their. Authors

(By Edward Lynam, in the "Observer London .)

IN 1755 Samuel Johnson published in two volumes, his “Dictionary of the English Language, ” the result of eight years’ labour “amid inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow.” His main purpose was to standardise the language, which, in the opinion of Pope and the Augustans, had practically reached perfection.

Trench, at the head of a group of men who realised that the English language was too great for even Johnson to control, peirsuaded the Philological Society to begin a New English Dictionary, preIn 1879, when members of the society had collected a large quantity of material, the Oxford University Press took over the whole work and appointed Dr, after Sir James, Murray as editor. The first section of the dictionary, better known to the world as the Oxford Dictionary, was published in 1884. The work is now completed, 13 years after Murray’s death, and the concluding sections will be published soon. A supplement containing words which have come into use in the last 50 years, including war-words, is being prepared. No living language has been so carefully collected and analysed or so richly set forth as the English language is in this dictionary. It contains every word, including obsolete, slang, colonial and dialect words, used in English literature the last thousand (in some cases twelve hundred) years, with its etymology, spellings, pronunciations and meanings through the centuries. In all, 414,825 words have been collected. They are an inheritance which will be shared by over one hundred and sixty million English-speaking people. As a detailed and scholarly inventory of the language the New English Dictionary is naturally superior to either Professor Whitney’s Century Dictionary or Webster ’s International Dictionary, though both these American works have done most valuable service for the English tongue. Thousands of voluntary workers in all parts of the world have contributed to this great undertaking.

The dictionary at once became the recognised authority on English words, and remained so for a century, exercising through many and variant editions a great, and generally good, influence on English writers, from Jane Austen to Dickens. Its special value lay in the definitions, framed by a mind unexcelled in precise and comprehensive expression, and in the quotations, which were chosen from the whole body of English literature. Boswell observed, however, that Johnson “quoted no author whose writings had a tendency to hurt sound religion and morality,”—a boycott which injured the dictionary more than it hurt the wicked authors. Some of the definitions have become famous. Oats Sis defined as “A grain, which is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people,” and Network as 4 ‘ Anything reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections. ’ 9

These are exceptional in the dictionary, and hardly fair to Johnson. Rather more typical is a story told by Boswell: Johnson, having remarked of the play “The Rehearsal, ” 44 It has not wit enough to keep it sweet, ’ ’ recollected himself and said, “It has not sufficient vitality to preserve it from putrefaction.” But the Dictionary must have made Johnson’s literary style, with all its defects and its

The historical method of chronological arrangement of meanings and quotations has been followed scientifically and successfully. In one only of the great foreign dictionaries, that of the Swedish Academy (1894—), has this method been followed with equal strictness; the Swedish vocabulary is, of course, considerably smaller than ours. Each word has been tracked right through English literature, and its date and manner of entry into the written language recorded by a dated quotation. Thus we find that Shakespeare invented besmirth (“Hamlet,” 1602) and Carlyle besmutch; Southey produced betrayal in 1816; and Coleridge esemplastic, of which he was very proud; Goldsmith contributed cantankerous (probably of Irish origin) in 1772, Burke disorganize (from the French) in 1793, and Mr G. B. Shaw superman in 1903, while caucus as a political term arose in New England in 1863, and pernickety came in from Scotland in the last century. Gig was made well known *by Carlyle and Thackeray, both of whom used it as a symbol of smug respectability. It is a relief to find that bloody has no connection either with by*r Lady or with anything at all sanguinary. Non-skid and non-compos appear, I think, but not, so far, non-go. Here .indeed, is a wealth of material for scholars, for literary critics and biographers, for social historians, and for the student anxiously seeking a subject for his harmless, necessary thesis.

merits, very familiar to the English people of the early nineteenth century. Memories of it must underlie the pompous-humorous passages of many a classic; J!or instance, Lamb’s definition of a Poor Relation, “a piece of impertinent correspondency, an odious approximation,” or the description of Mr Pickwick preparing to engage Mr Tupman, 4 4 the heroic man actually threw himself into a paralytic attitude, confidently supposed by the bystanders to have been intended as a posture of selfdefence. ’ 9 * * * Latin dictionaries were many, but English ones few before Johnson’s time. The best of these, Edward Phillips’s 11 New World of English Words” (1658) was full of importations like aquosity, opitulation, and buccinate, which happily never became naturalised; the word on which Holof ernes’s reputation rested, 4 4 Honorificabilitudinitatibus, ’ ’ was not included. An interesting work is the “New Canting Dictionary: comprehcnding all the Terms, ancient and modern, used in the several Tribes of Gypsies, Beggars, Shoplifters, Highwaymen, Footpads, and all other Clans of‘Cheats and Villains” (1725). At the end of it is a collection of sentimental, and, I feel sure, very touching, poems, composed entirely in slang. * * * In 1853 Dr (afterwards Archbishop)

In the past the English language has gained two or three words and lost one or two every year. The rate of gain and loss is now much higher. Since the world has grown smaller, we have gained many scientific arid foreign words, but because time also has dwindled, we have lost many that were worth a thought. While the spread of a literary sense of humour is forcing some good Anglo-Saxon words out of use, the mechanical and scientific apparatus which now form a great part of our outer life are bringing in an era of modified, democratic Latinity. The old speech, though it served George Eliot well, will hardly serve us. The scientific and analytic spirit of the day, which takes too little for granted, has made words derived from Greek and Latin fashionable with English writers, while the imposing language used in commercial advertising must eventually affect the vocabulary of the general public.

liant than many of those who have eyes to see. As a propagandist, Mr. Hay is less satisfactory than as a humorist, and it is in those chapters where the hero stays with an inconsequential, high-spirited family of cousins that he is at his brightest and best. "The Poor Gentleman." Hodder and Stoughton, London. Our copy comes from the publisher’s Australian representative, W. S. Smart, Sydney. “How To Do It” Anthony Armstrong, who is wellknown as “A.A.” to readers of “Punch,” has republished a number of humorous lectures, showing how one can achieve greatness. His is a pretty jesting, and one thing the perusal of the book will do—it will teach you how to laugh. Well worth reading. "How To Do It,” by Anthony Armstrong. Methuen and Company, London. Our copy from the publishers.