Noted lexicographers

Lexicology VS lexicography

Lexicology (from lexiko -, in the Late Greek lexikon) is that part of linguistics which studies words, their nature and meaning, words' elements, relations between words (semantical relations), words groups and the whole lexicon.

The term first appeared in the 1820s, though there were lexicologists in essence before the term was coined.

An allied science to lexicology is lexicography, which also studies words in relation with dictionaries - it is actually concerned with the inclusion of words in dictionaries and from that perspective with the whole lexicon.

Therefore lexicography is the theory and practice of composing dictionaries.

Sometimes lexicography is considered to be a part or a branch of lexicology, but the two disciplines should not be mistaken: lexicographers are the people who write dictionaries, they are at the same time lexicologists too, but not all lexicologists are lexicographers. It is said that lexicography is the practical lexicology, it is practically oriented though it has its own theory, while the pure lexicology is mainly theoretical.

A good example of lexicology at work, that everyone is familiar with, is that of dictionaries and thesaurus. Dictionaries are books or computer programs (or databases) that actually represent lexicographical work, they are open and purposed for the use of public.

Questions that lexicographers are concerned with are for example the difficulties in defining what simple words such as 'the' mean, and how compound or complex words, or words with many meanings can be clearly explained. Also which words to keep in and which not to include in a dictionary.

Noted lexicographers

Some noted lexicographers include:

• Dr. Samuel Johnson (September 18, 1709 – December 13, 1784)
• French lexicographer Pierre Larousse (October 23, 1817-January 3, 1875)
• Noah Webster (October 16, 1758 – May 28, 1843)
• Russian lexicographer Vladimir Dal (November 10, 1801 – September 22, 1872)

Two volumes thick and 2,300 pages long, Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language, marked a milestone in a language in desperate need of standards. No English dictionary before it had devoted so much space to everyday words and been so thorough in its definitions. Johnson's was the dictionary used by Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, Wordsworth and Coleridge, the Brontes and the Brownings, Thomas Hardy and Oscar Wilde.

Published on 15 April 1755 and written by Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language, sometimes published as Johnson's Dictionary, is among the most influential dictionaries in the history of the English language. 250th anniversary of the publication of Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language commemorated on a British 50 pence coin

There was dissatisfaction with the dictionaries of the period, so in June 1746 a group of London booksellers contracted Johnson to write a dictionary for the sum of 1,500 guineas, equivalent to about £220,000 as of 2010.^[1] Johnson took nearly nine years to complete the work, although he had claimed he could finish it in three. Remarkably, he did so single-handedly, with only clerical assistance to copy out the illustrative quotations that he had marked in books. Johnson produced several revised editions during his life.

A hundred years earlier, books had been regarded with something approaching veneration, but by the mid-eighteenth century this was no longer the case. The rise of literacy among the general public, combined with the technical advances in the mechanics of printing and bookbinding, meant that for the first time, books, texts, maps, pamphlets and newspapers were widely available to the general public at a reasonable cost. Such an explosion of the printed word demanded a set pattern of grammar, definition, and spelling for those words. This could be achieved by means of an authoritative dictionary of the English language. In 1746, a consortium of London's most successful printers, including Robert Dodsley and Thomas Longman – none could afford to undertake it alone – set out to satisfy and capitalise on this need by the ever increasing reading and writing public.

Johnson's dictionary was not the first English dictionary, nor even among the first dozen. Over the previous 150 years more than twenty dictionaries had been published in England, the oldest of these being a Latin-English "wordbook" by Sir Thomas Elyot published in 1538.

The next to appear was by Richard Mulcaster, a headmaster, in 1583. Mulcaster compiled what he termed "a generall table [of 8,000 words] we commonlie use...[yet] It were a thing verie praise worthy...if som well learned...would gather all words which we use in the English tung...into one dictionary...

In 1598 an Italian-English dictionary by John Florio was published. It was the first English dictionary to use quotations ("illustrations") to give meaning to the word; surprisingly, in none of these dictionaries so far were there any actual definitions of words. This was to change, to a small extent, in schoolmaster Robert Cawdrey's "Table Alphabeticall", published in 1604. Though it contained only 2,449 words, and no word beginning with the letters W, X, or Y, this was the first monolingual English dictionary.

Several more dictionaries followed: in Latin, English, French and Italian, Among them a law dictionary by'John Cowell (1607) and a dictionary of 40,000 words prepared in 1721 by Nathan Bailey, though none was as comprehensive in breadth or style as Johnson's. The problem with these dictionaries was that they tended to be little more than poorly organized and poorly researched glossaries of "hard words": words that were technical, foreign, obscure or antiquated. But perhaps the greatest single fault of these early lexicographers was, as one historian put it, that they "failed to give sufficient sense of [the English] language as it appeared in use. " In that sense Dr. Johnson's dictionary was the first to comprehensively document the English lexicon.

Johnson's dictionary was prepared between the years of 1746 and 1755. By 1747 Johnson had written his Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language, which spelled out his intentions and proposed methodology for preparing his document. He clearly saw benefit in drawing from previous efforts, and saw the process as a parallel to legal precedent (possibly influenced by Cowell):

Johnson's Plan received the patronage of Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield but not to Johnson's pleasure. Chesterfield did not care about praise, but was instead interested by Johnson's abilities. Seven years after first meeting Johnson to discuss the work, Chesterfield wrote two anonymous essays in The World that recommended the Dictionary.

We must have recourse to the old Roman expedient in times of confusion, and chose a dictator. Upon this principle, I give my vote for Mr Johnson to fill that great and arduous post.^[6]

However, Johnson did not appreciate the tone of the essay, and he felt that Chesterfield had not made good on his promise to be the work's patron. In a letter, Johnson explained his feelings about the matter:

Seven years, my lord, have now past since I waited in your outward rooms or was repulsed from your door, during which time I have been pushing on my work through difficulties of which it is useless to complain, and have brought it at last to the verge of publication without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favour. Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a patron before... Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind: but it has been delayed till I am indifferent and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary and cannot impart it; till I am known and do not want it.

The Text

A Dictionary of the English Language was somewhat large and very expensive. Its pages were 18 inches (46 cm) tall and nearly 20 inches (50 cm) wide. The paper was of the finest quality available, the cost of which ran to nearly £1,600; more than Johnson had been paid to write the book. Johnson himself pronounced the book "Vasta mole superbus" ("Proud in its great bulk"). No bookseller could possibly hope to print this book without help; outside a few special editions of the Bible no book of this heft and size had even been set to type.

The title page reads:

A
DICTIONARY
of the
English Language:
in which
The WORDS are deduced from their ORIGINALS,
and
ILLUSTRATED in their DIFFERENT SIGNIFICATIONS
by
EXAMPLES from the best WRITERS.
To which are prefixed,
A HISTORY of the LANGUAGE,
and AN ENGLISH GRAMMAR.
By SAMUEL JOHNSON, A.M.
In TWO Volumes
VOL. I

The words "Samuel Johnson" and "English Language" were printed in red; the rest was printed in black. This first edition of the dictionary contained a 42,773 word list, to which only a few more were added in subsequent editions. An important innovation of Johnson's was to illustrate the meanings of his words by literary quotation, of which there are around 114,000. The authors most frequently cited by Johnson include Shakespeare, Milton and Dryden. For example:

OPULENCE

Wealth; riches; affluence

"There in full opulence a banker dwelt,
Who all the joys and pangs of riches felt;
His sideboard glitter'd with imagin'd plate,
And his proud fancy held a vast estate."
-- Jonathan Swift

Furthermore, Johnson, unlike Bailey, added notes on a word's usage, rather than being merely descriptive.

Unlike most modern lexicographers, Johnson introduced humour or prejudice into quite a number of his definitions. Among the best known are:

• "Excise: a hateful tax levied upon commodities and adjudged not by the common judges of property but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid"
• "Lexicographer: a writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge that busies himself in tracing the original and detailing the signification of words"
• "Oats: a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people"

A much less well-known example is: "Monsieur: a term of reproach for a Frenchman"

On a more serious level, Johnson's work showed a heretofore unseen meticulousness. Unlike all the proto-dictionaries that had come before, painstaking care went into the completeness when it came not only to "illustrations" but also to definitions as well:

• The word "turn" had 16 definitions with 15 illustrations
• The word "time" had 20 definitions with 14 illustrations
• The word "put" ran more than 5,000 words spread over 3 pages
• The word "take" had 134 definitions, running 8,000 words, over 5 pages ^[9]

The original goal was to publish the dictionary in two folio volumes: A-K and L-Z. But that soon proved unwieldy, unprofitable, and unrealistic. Subsequent printings ran to four volumes; even these stacked one on top of the other stood 10 inches (25.4 cm) tall, and weighed in at nearly 21 pounds (9.5 kg). In addition to the sheer physical heft of Johnson's dictionary, came the equally hefty price: £4/10/-. (equivalent to £675 in 2005). So discouraging was the price that by 1784, thirty years after the first edition was published, when the dictionary since run through five editions, only about 6,000 copies were in circulation—an average sale of 200 books a year for thirty years.

Johnson's etymologies would be considered poor by modern standards, and he gave little guide to pronunciation; one example being "Cough: A convulsion of the lungs, vellicated by some sharp serosity. It is pronounced coff". Much of his dictionary was prescriptivist, and it was also linguistically conservative, advocating traditional spellings, for example olde, rather than the simplifications that would be favoured 73 years later by Noah Webster.

In spite of its shortcomings, the dictionary was far and away the best of its day, a milestone in English-language lexicography to which all modern dictionaries owe some gratitude. Johnson's dictionary was still considered^[authoritative until the appearance of the Oxford English Dictionary at the end of the nineteenth century.

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