Books: Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language
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Samuel Johnson >> Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language
The particles are among all nations applied with so great latitude,
that they are not easily reducible under any regular scheme of
explication: this difficulty is not less, nor perhaps greater, in
English, than in other languages. I have laboured them with diligence,
I hope with success; such at least as can be expected in a task,
which no man, however learned or sagacious, has yet been able to
perform.
Some words there are which I cannot explain, because I do not
understand them; these might have been omitted very often with
little inconvenience, but I would not so far indulge my vanity as
to decline this confession: for when Tully owns himself ignorant
whether lessus, in the twelve tables, means a funeral song,
or mourning garment; and Aristotle doubts whether [word in Greek]
in the Iliad, signifies a mule, or muleteer, I may surely, without
shame, leave some obscurities to happier industry, or future
information.
The rigour of interpretative lexicography requires that the
explanation, and the word explained, should always be reciprocal;
this I have always endeavoured, but could not always attain. Words
are seldom exactly synonimous; a new term was not introduced,
but because the former was thought inadequate: names, therefore,
have often many ideas, but few ideas have many names. It was then
necessary to use the proximate word, for the deficiency of single
terms can very seldom be supplied by circumlocution; nor is the
inconvenience great of such mutilated interpretations, because the
sense may easily be collected entire from the examples.
In every word of extensive use, it was requisite to mark the progress
of its meaning, and show by what gradations of intermediate sense
it has passed from its primitive to its remote and accidental
signification; so that every foregoing explanation should tend to
that which follows, and the series be regularly concatenated from
the first notion to the last.
This is specious, but not always practicable; kindred senses may
be so interwoven, that the perplexity cannot be disentangled, nor
any reason be assigned why one should be ranged before the other.
When the radical idea branches out into parallel ramifications,
how can a consecutive series be formed of senses in their nature
collateral? The shades of meaning sometimes pass imperceptibly into
each other; so that though on one side they apparently differ, yet
it is impossible to mark the point of contact. Ideas of the same
race, though not exactly alike, are sometimes so little different,
that no words can express the dissimilitude, though the mind easily
perceives it, when they are exhibited together; and sometimes there
is such a confusion of acceptations, that discernment is wearied,
and distinction puzzled, and perseverance herself hurries to an
end, by crouding together what she cannot separate.
These complaints of difficulty will, by those that have never
considered words beyond their popular use, be thought only the jargon
of a man willing to magnify his labours, and procure veneration to
his studies by involution and obscurity. But every art is obscure
to those that have not learned it: this uncertainty of terms,
and commixture of ideas, is well known to those who have joined
philosophy with grammar; and if I have not expressed them very
clearly, it must be remembered that I am speaking of that which
words are insufficient to explain.
The original sense of words is often driven out of use by their
metaphorical acceptations, yet must be inserted for the sake of
a regular origination. Thus I know not whether ardour is used for
material heat, or whether flagrant, in English, ever signifies the
same with burning; yet such are the primitive ideas of these words,
which are therefore set first, though without examples, that the
figurative senses may be commodiously deduced.
Such is the exuberance of signification which many words have
obtained, that it was scarcely possible to collect all their senses;
sometimes the meaning of derivatives must be sought in the mother
term, and sometimes deficient explanations of the primitive may
be supplied in the train of derivation. In any case of doubt or
difficulty, it will be always proper to examine all the words of
the same race; for some words are slightly passed over to avoid
repetition, some admitted easier and clearer explanation than
others, and all will be better understood, as they are considered
in greater variety of structures and relations.
All the interpretations of words are not written with the same
skill, or the same happiness: things equally easy in themselves,
are not all equally easy to any single mind. Every writer of a
long work commits errours, where there appears neither ambiguity
to mislead, nor obscurity to confound him; and in a search like
this, many felicities of expression will be casually overlooked,
many convenient parallels will be forgotten, and many particulars
will admit improvement from a mind utterly unequal to the whole
performance.
But many seeming faults are to be imputed rather to the nature of
the undertaking, than the negligence of the performer. Thus some
explanations are unavoidably reciprocal or circular, as hind, the
female of the stag; stag, the male of the hind: sometimes easier words
are changed into harder, as burial into sepulture or interment,
drier into desiccative, dryness into siccity or aridity, fit
into paroxysm; for the easiest word, whatever it be, can never
be translated into one more easy. But easiness and difficulty are
merely relative, and if the present prevalence of our language
should invite foreigners to this dictionary, many will be assisted
by those words which now seem only to increase or produce obscurity.
For this reason I have endeavoured frequently to join a Teutonick
and Roman interpretation, as to cheer, to gladden, or exhilarate,
that every learner of English may be assisted by his own tongue.
The solution of all difficulties, and the supply of all defects,
must be sought in the examples, subjoined to the various senses of
each word, and ranged according to the time of their authours.
When first I collected these authorities, I was desirous that every
quotation should be useful to some other end than the illustration
of a word; I therefore extracted from philosophers principles of
science; from historians remarkable facts; from chymists complete
processes; from divines striking exhortations; and from poets beautiful
descriptions. Such is design, while it is yet at a distance from
execution. When the time called upon me to range this accumulation
of elegance and wisdom into an alphabetical series, I soon discovered
that the bulk of my volumes would fright away the student, and was
forced to depart from my scheme of including all that was pleasing or
useful in English literature, and reduce my transcripts very often
to clusters of words, in which scarcely any meaning is retained; thus
to the weariness of copying, I was condemned to add the vexation
of expunging. Some passages I have yet spared, which may relieve
the labour of verbal searches, and intersperse with verdure and
flowers the dusty desarts of barren philology.
The examples, thus mutilated, are no longer to be considered as
conveying the sentiments or doctrine of their authours; the word
for the sake of which they are inserted, with all its appendant
clauses, has been carefully preserved; but it may sometimes happen,
by hasty detruncation, that the general tendency of the sentence
may be changed: the divine may desert his tenets, or the philosopher
his system.
Some of the examples have been taken from writers who were never
mentioned as masters of elegance or models of stile; but words
must be sought where they are used; and in what pages, eminent
for purity, can terms of manufacture or agriculture be found? Many
quotations serve no other purpose, than that of proving the bare
existence of words, and are therefore selected with less scrupulousness
than those which are to teach their structures and relations.
My purpose was to admit no testimony of living authours, that I
might not be misled by partiality, and that none of my cotemporaries
might have reason to complain; nor have I departed from this
resolution, but when some performance of uncommon excellence excited
my veneration, when my memory supplied me, from late books, with
an example that was wanting, or when my heart, in the tenderness
of friendship, solicited admission for a favourite name.
So far have I been from any care to grace my pages with modern
decorations, that I have studiously endeavoured to collect examples
and authorities from the writers before the restoration, whose works
I regard as the wells of English undefiled, as the pure sources of
genuine diction. Our language, for almost a century, has, by the
concurrence of many causes, been gradually departing from its original
Teutonick character, and deviating towards a Gallick structure and
phraseology, from which it ought to be our endeavour to recal it,
by making our ancient volumes the ground-work of stile, admitting
among the additions of later times, only such as may supply real
deficiencies, such as are readily adopted by the genius of our
tongue, and incorporate easily with our native idioms.
But as every language has a time of rudeness antecedent to
perfection, as well as of false refinement and declension, I have
been cautious lest my zeal for antiquity might drive me into times
too remote, and croud my book with words now no longer understood.
I have fixed Sidney's work for the boundary, beyond which I make few
excursions. From the authours which rose in the time of Elizabeth,
a speech might be formed adequate to all the purposes of use and
elegance. If the language of theology were extracted from Hooker
and the translation of the Bible; the terms of natural knowledge
from Bacon; the phrases of policy, war, and navigation from Raleigh;
the dialect of poetry and fiction from Spenser and Sidney; and the
diction of common life from Shakespeare, few ideas would be lost to
mankind, for want of English words, in which they might be expressed.
It is not sufficient that a word is found, unless it be so combined
as that its meaning is apparently determined by the tract and tenour
of the sentence; such passages I have therefore chosen, and when
it happened that any authour gave a definition of a term, or such
an explanation as is equivalent to a definition, I have placed
his authority as a supplement to my own, without regard to the
chronological order, that is otherwise observed.
Some words, indeed, stand unsupported by any authority, but they are
commonly derivative nouns or adverbs, formed from their primitives
by regular and constant analogy, or names of things seldom occurring
in books, or words of which I have reason to doubt the existence.
There is more danger of censure from the multiplicity than paucity
of examples; authorities will sometimes seem to have been accumulated
without necessity or use, and perhaps some will be found, which
might, without loss, have been omitted. But a work of this kind
is not hastily to be charged with superfluities: those quotations,
which to careless or unskilful perusers appear only to repeat
the same sense, will often exhibit, to a more accurate examiner,
diversities of signification, or, at least, afford different shades
of the same meaning: one will shew the word applied to persons,
another to things; one will express an ill, another a good, and a
third a neutral sense; one will prove the expression genuine from
an ancient authour; another will shew it elegant from a modern: a
doubtful authority is corroborated by another of more credit; an
ambiguous sentence is ascertained by a passage clear and determinate;
the word, how often soever repeated, appears with new associates
and in different combinations, and every quotation contributes
something to the stability or enlargement of the language.
When words are used equivocally, I receive them in either sense; when
they are metaphorical, I adopt them in their primitive acceptation.
I have sometimes, though rarely, yielded to the temptation of
exhibiting a genealogy of sentiments, by shewing how one authour
copied the thoughts and diction of another: such quotations are
indeed little more than repetitions, which might justly be censured,
did they not gratify the mind, by affording a kind of intellectual
history.
The various syntactical structures occurring in the examples have
been carefully noted; the licence or negligence with which many
words have been hitherto used, has made our stile capricious and
indeterminate; when the different combinations of the same word are
exhibited together, the preference is readily given to propriety,
and I have often endeavoured to direct the choice.
Thus have I laboured by settling the orthography, displaying the
analogy, regulating the structures, and ascertaining the signification
of English words, to perform all the parts of a faithful lexicographer:
but I have not always executed my own scheme, or satisfied my own
expectations. The work, whatever proofs of diligence and attention
it may exhibit, is yet capable of many improvements: the orthography
which I recommend is still controvertible, the etymology which I
adopt is uncertain, and perhaps frequently erroneous; the explanations
are sometimes too much contracted, and sometimes too much diffused,
the significations are distinguished rather with subtilty than
skill, and the attention is harrassed with unnecessary minuteness.
The examples are too often injudiciously truncated, and perhaps
sometimes, I hope very rarely, alleged in a mistaken sense; for in
making this collection I trusted more to memory, than, in a state
of disquiet and embarrassment, memory can contain, and purposed
to supply at the review what was left incomplete in the first
transcription.
Many terms appropriated to particular occupations, though necessary
and significant, are undoubtedly omitted; and of the words most
studiously considered and exemplified, many senses have escaped
observation.
Yet these failures, however frequent, may admit extenuation and
apology. To have attempted much is always laudable, even when the
enterprize is above the strength that undertakes it: To rest below
his own aim is incident to every one whose fancy is active, and
whose views are comprehensive; nor is any man satisfied with himself
because he has done much, but because he can conceive little. When
first I engaged in this work, I resolved to leave neither words
nor things unexamined, and pleased myself with a prospect of the
hours which I should revel away in feasts of literature, with the
obscure recesses of northern learning, which I should enter and
ransack; the treasures with which I expected every search into those
neglected mines to reward my labour, and the triumph with which I
should display my acquisitions to mankind. When I had thus enquired
into the original of words, I resolved to show likewise my attention
to things; to pierce deep into every science, to enquire the nature
of every substance of which I inserted the name, to limit every idea
by a definition strictly logical, and exhibit every production of
art or nature in an accurate description, that my book might be in
place of all other dictionaries whether appellative or technical.
But these were the dreams of a poet doomed at last to wake
a lexicographer. I soon found that it is too late to look for
instruments, when the work calls for execution, and that whatever
abilities I had brought to my task, with those I must finally
perform it. To deliberate whenever I doubted, to enquire whenever
I was ignorant, would have protracted the undertaking without end,
and, perhaps, without much improvement; for I did not find by my
first experiments, that that I had not of my own was easily to be
obtained: I saw that one enquiry only gave occasion to another,
that book referred to book, that to search was not always to find,
and to find was not always to be informed; and that thus to persue
perfection, was, like the first inhabitants of Arcadia, to chace
the sun, which, when they had reached the hill where he seemed to
rest, was still beheld at the same distance from them.
I then contracted my design, determining to confide in myself, and
no longer to solicit auxiliaries, which produced more incumbrance
than assistance: by this I obtained at least one advantage, that
I set limits to my work, which would in time be ended, though not
completed.
Despondency has never so far prevailed as to depress me to
negligence; some faults will at last appear to be the effects of
anxious diligence and persevering activity. The nice and subtle
ramifications of meaning were not easily avoided by a mind intent
upon accuracy, and convinced of the necessity of disentangling
combinations, and separating similitudes. Many of the distinctions
which to common readers appear useless and idle, will be found
real and important by men versed in the school philosophy, without
which no dictionary shall ever be accurately compiled, or skilfully
examined. Some senses however there are, which, though not the same,
are yet so nearly allied, that they are often confounded. Most men
think indistinctly, and therefore cannot speak with exactness; and
consequently some examples might be indifferently put to either
signification: this uncertainty is not to be imputed to me, who do
not form, but register the language; who do not teach men how they
should think, but relate how they have hitherto expressed their
thoughts.
The imperfect sense of some examples I lamented, but could not
remedy, and hope they will be compensated by innumerable passages
selected with propriety, and preserved with exactness; some shining
with sparks of imagination, and some replete with treasures of
wisdom.
The orthography and etymology, though imperfect, are not imperfect
for want of care, but because care will not always be successful,
and recollection or information come too late for use.
That many terms of art and manufacture are omitted, must be frankly
acknowledged; but for this defect I may boldly allege that it
was unavoidable: I could not visit caverns to learn the miner's
language, nor take a voyage to perfect my skill in the dialect of
navigation, nor visit the warehouses of merchants, and shops of
artificers, to gain the names of wares, tools and operations, of
which no mention is found in books; what favourable accident, or
easy enquiry brought within my reach, has not been neglected; but
it had been a hopeless labour to glean up words, by courting living
information, and contesting with the sullenness of one, and the
roughness of another.
To furnish the academicians della Crusca with words of this kind,
a series of comedies called la Fiera, or the Fair, was professedly
written by Buonaroti; but I had no such assistant, and therefore
was content to want what they must have wanted likewise, had they
not luckily been so supplied.
Nor are all words which are not found in the vocabulary, to be
lamented as omissions. Of the laborious and mercantile part of the
people, the diction is in a great measure casual and mutable; many
of their terms are formed for some temporary or local convenience,
and though current at certain times and places, are in others
utterly unknown. This fugitive cant, which is always in a state of
increase or decay, cannot be regarded as any part of the durable
materials of a language, and therefore must be suffered to perish
with other things unworthy of preservation.
Care will sometimes betray to the appearance of negligence. He that
is catching opportunities which seldom occur, will suffer those to
pass by unregarded, which he expects hourly to return; he that is
searching for rare and remote things, will neglect those that are
obvious and familiar: thus many of the most common and cursory words
have been inserted with little illustration, because in gathering
the authorities, I forbore to copy those which I thought likely to
occur whenever they were wanted. It is remarkable that, in reviewing
my collection, I found the word sea unexemplified.
Thus it happens, that in things difficult there is danger from
ignorance, and in things easy from confidence; the mind, afraid of
greatness, and disdainful of littleness, hastily withdraws herself
from painful searches, and passes with scornful rapidity over tasks
not adequate to her powers, sometimes too secure for caution, and
again too anxious for vigorous effort; sometimes idle in a plain
path, and sometimes distracted in labyrinths, and dissipated by
different intentions.
A large work is difficult because it is large, even though all
its parts might singly be performed with facility; where there are
many things to be done, each must be allowed its share of time and
labour, in the proportion only which it bears to the whole; nor can
it be expected, that the stones which form the dome of a temple,
should be squared and polished like the diamond of a ring.
Of the event of this work, for which, having laboured it with so
much application, I cannot but have some degree of parental fondness,
it is natural to form conjectures. Those who have been persuaded
to think well of my design, will require that it should fix our
language, and put a stop to those alterations which time and chance
have hitherto been suffered to make in it without opposition.
With this consequence I will confess that I flattered myself for
a while; but now begin to fear that I have indulged expectation
which neither reason nor experience can justify. 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, and 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. The
French language has visibly changed under the inspection of the
academy; the stile of Amelot's translation of Father Paul is observed
by Le Courayer to be un peu passe; and no Italian will maintain
that the diction of any modern writer is not perceptibly different
from that of Boccace, Machiavel, or Caro.
Total and sudden transformations of a language seldom happen; conquests
and migrations are now very rare: but there are other causes of
change, which, though slow in their operation, and invisible in
their progress, are perhaps as much superiour to human resistance,
as the revolutions of the sky, or intumescence of the tide. Commerce,
however necessary, however lucrative, as it depraves the manners,
corrupts the language; they that have frequent intercourse with
strangers, to whom they endeavour to accommodate themselves, must
in time learn a mingled dialect, like the jargon which serves the
traffickers on the Mediterranean and Indian coasts. This will not
always be confined to the exchange, the warehouse, or the port,
but will be communicated by degrees to other ranks of the people,
and be at last incorporated with the current speech.
There are likewise internal causes equally forcible. The language
most likely to continue long without alteration, would be that of
a nation raised a little, and but a little above barbarity, secluded
from strangers, and totally employed in procuring the conveniencies
of life; either without books, or, like some of the Mahometan
countries, with very few: men thus busied and unlearned, having only
such words as common use requires, would perhaps long continue to
express the same notions by the same signs. But no such constancy
can be expected in a people polished by arts, and classed by
subordination, where one part of the community is sustained and
accommodated by the labour of the other. Those who have much leisure
to think, will always be enlarging the stock of ideas, and every
increase of knowledge, whether real or fancied, will produce new
words, or combinations of words. When the mind is unchained from
necessity, it will range after convenience; when it is left at
large in the fields of speculation, it will shift opinions; as any
custom is disused, the words that expressed it must perish with it;
as any opinion grows popular, it will innovate speech in the same
proportion as it alters practice.
As by the cultivation of various sciences, a language is amplified,
it will be more furnished with words deflected from original sense;
the geometrician will talk of a courtier's zenith, or the excentrick
virtue of a wild hero, and the physician of sanguine expectations
and phlegmatick delays. Copiousness of speech will give opportunities
to capricious choice, by which some words will be preferred,
and others degraded; vicissitudes of fashion will enforce the use
of new, or extend the signification of known terms. The tropes of
poetry will make hourly encroachments, and the metaphorical will
become the current sense: pronunciation will be varied by levity
or ignorance, and the pen must at length comply with the tongue;
illiterate writers will at one time or other, by publick infatuation,
rise into renown, who, not knowing the original import of words,
will use them with colloquial licentiousness, confound distinction,
and forget propriety. As politeness increases, some expressions will
be considered as too gross and vulgar for the delicate, others as
too formal and ceremonious for the gay and airy; new phrases are
therefore adopted, which must, for the same reasons, be in time
dismissed. Swift, in his petty treatise on the English language,
allows that new words must sometimes be introduced, but proposes
that none should be suffered to become obsolete. But what makes
a word obsolete, more than general agreement to forbear it? and
how shall it be continued, when it conveys an offensive idea, or
recalled again into the mouths of mankind, when it has once become
unfamiliar by disuse, and unpleasing by unfamiliarity?