Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Preface to the Dictionary [from A Dictionary of the English Language]

London

Printed by W. Strahan

1755

"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."

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.
(p. 295 in Brady and Wimsatt)

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Reading

First and 2nd edition in 1755-1756; 3rd edition in 1765; 4th edition, rev. by author, in 1773; 5th edition in 1784; 6th and 7th in 1785. Over 25 entries in ESTC (1755, 1756, 1765, 1773, 1784, 1785; with abridgments extracted from the folio edition in 1756, 1758, 1760, 1764, 1765, 1766, 1768, 1770, 1775, 1777, 1778, 1783, 1786, 1790, 1792, 1793, 1794, 1795, 1796, 1797, 1798, 1799, 1800).

See 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. 2 vols. (London: Printed by W. Strahan, for J. and P. Knaptor; T. and T. Longman; C. Hitch and L. Hawes; A. Millar; and R. and J. Dodsley, 1755). <Link to ESTC><2nd edition>

Text from Jack Lynch's online edition <Link>. Reading facsimile edition of 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. (New York: AMS Press, 1967). Reading also Samuel Johnson: Selected Poetry and Prose, eds. Frank Brady and W. K. Wimsatt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), 277-298.

05/09/2012