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    Johnson's Dictionary: A Modern Selection
    Johnson's Dictionary: A Modern Selection
    Johnson's Dictionary: A Modern Selection
    Ebook754 pages8 hours

    Johnson's Dictionary: A Modern Selection

    By Samuel Johnson

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    About this ebook

    Written virtually single-handedly over a seven-year period by a revered dean of English letters, Johnson’s Dictionary first appeared in 1755. A remarkable monument to the vigor and variety of our language and to the genius of its author, it served as the standard dictionary for more than 150 years and formed the basis for all subsequent English dictionaries. This modern version reduces the original 2,300 pages of definitions and literary examples to a more manageable length, retaining the verbal pleasure and historical curiosity of the original. It features many entries that can no longer be found in most modern dictionaries, with intriguing definitions and examples of usage in the literature of Johnson’s time.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDover Publications
    Release dateFeb 13, 2013
    ISBN9780486168135
    Johnson's Dictionary: A Modern Selection
    Author

    Samuel Johnson

    Samuel Johnson (1709 – 1784) was an English writer – a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. His works include the biography The Life of Richard Savage, an influential annotated edition of Shakespeare's plays, and the widely read tale Rasselas, the massive and influential Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, and most notably, A Dictionary of the English Language, the definitive British dictionary of its time.

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    • 5/5
      This is an excellent introduction to the prose of Samuel Johnson, combining his wit and wisdom to great effect through selected entries from his Dictionary.

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    Johnson's Dictionary - Samuel Johnson

    SELECTION

    A

    a’bbey-lubber. A slothful loiterer in a religious house, under pretence of retirement and austerity.

    This is no Father Dominic, no huge overgrown abbey-lubber ; this is but a diminutive sucking friar.

    Dryden, Spanish Friar.

    abeceda’rian. He that teaches or learns the alphabet, or first rudiments of literature.

    a’bject. A man without hope; a man whose miseries are irretrievable.

    But in mine adversity they rejoiced, and gathered themselves together; yea, the abjects gathered themselves together against me, and I knew it not; they did tear me, and ceased not.

    Psalm xxxv, 15.

    to abla’ctate. To wean from the breast.

    to a’blegate. To send abroad upon some employment; also to send a person out of the way that one is weary of.

    ablu’tion. (3) The cup given, without consecration, to the laity in the popish churches.

    to abo’de. To foretoken or foreshow; to be a prognostic, to be ominous. It is taken, with its derivatives, in the sense either of good or ill.

    ablution. (3) I.e., the third definition of this word.

    Every man,

    After the hideous storm that follow’d, was

    A thing inspir’d; and, not consulting, broke

    Into a general prophecy, that this tempest,

    Dashing the garment of this peace, aboded

    The sudden breach of it.

    Shakespeare’s Henry VIII.

    abo’dement. A secret anticipation of something future; an impression upon the mind of some event to come; prognostication; omen.

    abo’minable. (3) In low and ludicrous language, it is a word of loose and indeterminate censure.

    They say you are a melancholy fellow.—I am so; I do love it better than laughing.–Those that are in extremity of either, are abominable fellows, and betray themselves to every modern censure, worse than drunkards.

    Shakespeare′s As You Like It.

    abo’rtive. That which is born before the due time.

    Take the fine skin of an abortive, and, with starch thin laid on, prepare your ground or tablet. Peacham, On Drawing.

    above-board. In open sight; without artifice or trick. A figurative expression, borrowed from gamesters, who, when they put their hands under the table, are changing their cards. It is used only in familiar language.

    It is the part also of an honest man to deal above-board, and without tricks. L’Estrange.

    abracada’bra. A superstitious charm against agues.

    Abraham’s balm. The name of an herb.

    to absco’nd. To hide one’s self; to retire from the public view: generally used of persons in debt, or criminals eluding the law.

    absente’e. He that is absent from his station or employment, or country. A word used commonly with regard to Irishmen living out of their country.

    a’bsonous. Absurd, contrary to reason.

    to absu’me. To bring to an end by a gradual waste; to eat up.

    abu’se. (3) Seducement.

    Abraham’s balm. An example of a definition which does not define.

    Was it not enough for him to have deceived me, and through the deceit abused me, and, after the abuse, forsaken me, but that he must now, of all the company, and before all the company, lay want of beauty to my charge. Sidney, b. ii.

    abu’sive. (3) Deceitful; a sense little used, yet not improper.

    aca′cia. (1) A drug brought from Egypt, which, being supposed the inspissated juice of a tree, is imitated by the juice of sloes, boiled to the same consistence. Dictionaire de Commerce. Savary. Trevoux.

    a’ccidence. The little book containing the first rudiments of grammar, and explaining the properties of the eight parts of speech.

    I do confess I do want eloquence,

    And never yet did learn mine accidence.

    Taylor the Water-poet.

    to acco’st. To speak to first; to address; to salute. You mistake, knight: accost her, front her, board her, woo her, assail her. Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.

    to accro’ach. To draw to one as with a hook; to gripe, to draw away by degrees what is another’s.

    accuba’tion. The antient posture of leaning at meals.

    It will appear, that accubation, or lying down at meals, was a gesture used by very many nations.

    Browne’s Vulgar Errours, b. v.

    a’ce. (2) A small quantity.

    I’ll not wag an ace farther: the whole world shall not bribe me to it. Dryden’s Spanish Friar.

    a’cme. The height of any thing; more especially used to denote the height of a distemper, which is divided into four periods. 1. The arche, the beginning or first attack. 2. Anabasis, the growth. 3. Acme, the height. And, 4. Paracme, which is the declension of the distemper. Quincy.

    aco’usticks. (2) Medicines to help the hearing. Quincy.

    acqui’ttance. (2) A writing testifying the receipt of a debt. They had got a worse trick than that; the same man bought and sold to himself, paid the money, and gave the acquittance. Arbuthnot’s History of John Bull.

    acroama’tical. Of or pertaining to deep learning; the opposite of exoterical.

    acro’ss. Athwart, laid over something so as to cross it.

    There is a set of artisans, who, by the help of several poles, which they lay across each others shoulders, build themselves up into a kind of pyramid; so that you see a pile of men in the air of four or five rows rising one above another. Addison, On Italy.

    a’ction-taking. Accustomed to resent by means of law; litigious.

    to a’ctivate. To make active. This word is perhaps used only by the author alleged.

    As snow and ice, especially being holpen, and their cold activated by nitre or salt, will turn water into ice, and that in a few hours; so it may be, it will turn wood or stiff clay into stone, in longer time.

    Bacon’s Natural History, No. 83.

    a’ctuary. The register who compiles the minutes of the proceedings of a court; a term of the civil law.

    a’damant. (3) Adamant is taken for the loadstone.

    You draw me, you hard-hearted adamant!

    But yet you draw not iron; for my heart

    Is true as steel.

    Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream.

    to adco’rporate. To unite one body with another; more usually wrote accorporate; which see.

    a’dder. A serpent, a viper, a poisonous reptile; perhaps of any species. In common language, adders and snakes are not the same.

    a’ddice. (For which we corruptly speak and write adz, from Saxon an

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