The Development of the Dictionary

of the English Language

When you turn over the leaves of your dictionary, you do so for one of five things: to find out (1) how to spell a word; (2) how to divide it; (3) how to pronounce it; (4) what the word means; or (5) from what the word is derived. Possibly you will be surprized to learn that syllabication, pronunciation, and derivation were not given place in the early English dictionaries, which were merely lists of words with more or less accurate explanations of their meanings. First, classified according to subjects without regard to alphabetical order, but later, correctly alphabetized. Richard Huloet was the first to produce an English dictionary. This work, the Abecedarium, which he issued in 1552, was the first in which the meanings of English words were explained in English, but, in addition thereto, Latin synonyms and definitions in French were included. In Huloet's time the "sneak-thief" was known as a "picket," and was defined as a "thief that goes into chambers making as tho he sought something." Then followed the Latin and the French. Almesse, that is "alms," he defined as "a gift or dryncke, meate, or money, distributed to the poore, sporta, sportula." Anabaptistes he described as "a sorte of heretyques of late tyme in Germanye about the yere of our Lorde God, 1524. . . Anabaptista.

This plan of treating words must have appealed to the people of the time, for it was followed by John Baret, who, in 1573, issued an "Alvearie, or Triple Dictionarie in Englyshe, Latin and French." To a later edition of this work Greek synonyms or definitions were added, and it was described as "newlie enriched with varietie of wordes, Phrases, Proverbs and diuers lightsome observations of Grammar." But lack of energy on the part of his printer compelled Baret to explain that "as for Greeke I could not ioyne (join) in with every Latin word, for lacke of fit Greeke letters, the printer not having leasure to provide the same.”

Robert Cawdrey compiled the first dictionary of the English language in which only English was used. This he described as "A Table Alphabeticall Conteyning and Teaching the True Writing and Understanding of Hard Usuall English Wordes." Cawdrey had so little faith in the average intelligence of the public of his day that he deemed it best to preface his work with the following instructions: "If thou be desirous (gentle reader) rightly and readily to understand and to profit by this Table, and such like, then thou must learn the alphabet, to wit, the order of the letters as they stand, perfectly without book, and where every letter standeth; as (b) neere the beginning, (n) about the middest, and (t) toward the end."

Walsh, in his "Literary Curiosities," tells us that the next Englishman to publish a dictionary was Cotgrave. This book was issued in 1611, and modestly termed by its compiler, "A Bundle of Words." He improved upon the work of his predecessors by giving completer definitions, and by illustrating them with current sayings and proverbs, and, in the preface, declared: "I (who am no God or angel) have caused such overslips as have yet occurred to mine eye or understanding to be placed neere the forhead of this Verball creature." The book was a French and English dictionary.

In 1598 John Florio issued "Queen Anna's New World of Words, or Dictionarie of the Italian and English Tongues, collected and newly much augmented, whereunto are added certaine necessarie rules and short observations for the Italian tongue, with portrait of the author by W. Hole." A new edition appeared in 1611. This work was named after Anne of Denmark, who became the wife of James I. of England.

Dr. John Bullokar produced the "English Expositor," a work that passed through many editions, in 1616, and the title-page of the edition, printed at Cambridge in 1688, reads as follows: "An English Expositour, or Compleat Dictionary; teaching the Interpretation of the hardest Words and most useful Terms of Art used in our Language; first set forth by J. B., Dr. of Physick, and now the eighth time revised, corrected, and very much augmented." It is a little volume, 18mo, and contains only 5,080 words.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Henry Cockeram, another of the early lexicographers, published a dictionary in 1623. This work was the first to be issued as "The English Dictionarie." Evidently its editor was a wag, for he recommends his book to "Ladies and Gentlewomen, Young Schollers, Clarkes, Merchants, and Others," as a work which presents "vulgar words, mock words, fustian terms ridiculously used in our language," and from which they can gather "the exact and ample word" which would fit them to shine. Whatever else he might have claimed, it is certain that his definition of an "idiote" as "an unlearned asse" has the merit of brevity and comprehensive expression. His definition of "pole" is odd enough to be quoted: "Pole, the end of the axle-tree whereon the heavens do move," but this oddity is eclipsed by his definition of "lynx," which is a "spotted beast that hath a most perfect sight, insomuch as it is said that it can see thorow a wall." He defined rude as "vulgar," and gave "agresticall, rusticall or immorigerous" as preferable terms. He condemned "to weede" as coarse, and recommended "sarculate," "diruncinate" or "averuncate" as more elegant. But neither the world nor the genius of language would accept these dicta, altho they have accepted his suggestion that "to interfeere" (as he spelled it) be used instead of "to knock the legs together" (as some horses do), which he considered vulgar. Cockeram's definition of the salamander reads like a joke: "A small venomous beast, with foure feet and a short taile, it lives in the fire, and at length, by his extreme cold puts out the fire." In humor this is surpassed by the description of the ignavus, a quainter zoological curiosity, of which it is said that "at night-time it singeth six kinds of notes one after another, as, la-sol-me-fa-me-re-ut."

Dictionaries formerly recounted many curious superstitions about animals. Richard Huloet gravely described the cockatrice as "a serpent, called the Kynge of Serpentes, whose nature is to kyll wyth hyssynge only." "The Barble," said Henry Cockeram, is "a Fish that will not meddle with the baite untill with her taile she have unhooked it from the hook." To him the crocodile was "a beast hatched of an egge, yet some of them grow to a great bignesse, as 10, 20, or 30 foot in length: it hath cruell teeth and scaly back, with very sharpe clawes on his feete: if it see a man afraid of him, it will eagerly pursue him, but on the contrary, if he be assaulted he will shun him. Hauing eaten the body of a man, it will weepe ouer the head, but in fine eate the head also: thence came the Prouerb, he shed Crocodile teares, viz., fayned teares." Bullokar, after a column and a half descriptive of the crocodile, ventures the further information that "he will weepe over a man's head when he had devoured the body, and then will eat up the head too . . . I saw once one of these beasts in London, brought thither dead, but in perfect forme, of about 2 yards long," a detail of personal experience which shows what was tolerated and even expected in a dictionary at that time. Bailey continues his predecessor's natural history with the same delightful simplicity. The (Narwhal) Unicorn Whale is "a fish eighteen foot long, having a head like a horse and scales as big as a crown piece, six large fins like the end of a galley oar, and a horn issuing out of the forehead nine feet long, so sharpe, as to pierce the hardest bodies," and the Loriot or Golden Oriole "a bird that, being hooked upon one who has the yellow jaundice, cures the person and dies himself."

In 1656 Thomas Blount issued his famous "Glossographia, or a Dictionary interpreting all such hard words of whatsoever language now used in our refined English tongue, with etymologies, definitions, and historical observations on the same; also the Terms of Divinity, Law, Physick, Mathematicks, and other Arts and Sciences explicated; very useful for all such as desire to understand what they read." This dictionary was a larger work than any other of the kind that preceded it, and it was soon followed by a still larger one, that of Edward Phillips, the nephew of Milton. Phillips's dictionary, published in 1658, was named "The New World of English Words, or a General Dictionary, containing the Interpretations of such hard Words as are derived from other Languages, whether Hebrew, Arabick, Syriack, Greek, Latin, Italian, French, Spanish, British, Dutch, Saxon, etc., their Etymologies and perfect Definitions." Sir John Hawkins, writing of this work, said: ""The New World of Words,' which, as it is much more copious than that of Blount, and contains a great quantity of matter, must be looked on as the basis of English lexicography." Tho Phillips is entitled to the credit of having advanced the progress of English lexicography, yet his "World" is hardly deserving of being regarded as its "basis." The first edition was a small folio, of only three hundred pages, containing about 13,000 words.

Phillips quotes from another author the following remark: "A dictionary for the English tongue would require an encyclopedie of knowledge, and the concurrence of many learned heads." "Such an encyclopedy," he says, "I present the reader with . . . a volume which the so many years' industry of myself and others hath brought to such perfection." In the publisher's adver

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

tisement of the work it is thus characterized: "The so long expected work, "The New World of English Words, or a General Dictionary,' containing the terms, etymologies, definitions and perfect interpretations of the proper significations of hard English words throughout the arts and sciences, liberal or mechanic, as also other subjects that are useful, or appertain to the language of our nation; to which is added the signification of proper names, mythology and poetical fictions, historical relations, geographical descriptions of the countries and cities of the world, especially of these three nations, wherein their chiefest antiquities, battles, and other most memorable passages, are mentioned; a work very necessary for strangers, as well as our own countrymen, for all persons that would rightly understand what they discourse, write, or read." After the death of the author, the sixth edition, edited by John Kersey, was published in 1706, "revised, corrected, and improved, with the addition of near 20,000 words from the best authors."

Phillips's Dictionary was followed by those of Elisha Coles, Edward Cocker, and Kersey, which, tho they were printed in a much smaller form, contained many more of the common words of the language. Dr. Watts, in his "Art of Reading and Writing English," published in 1720, thus notices the work of Kersey: "The best dictionary that I know for this purpose (spelling) is entitled 'A new English Dictionary,' etc., by J. K. The second edition, 1713, in small octavo.' Soon after 1720 appeared the famous dictionary of Nathan Bailey, which was the first English dictionary in which an attempt was made to give a complete collection of the words of the language. In his preface Bailey says: "As for the etymological part, or those words from foreign languages whence the English words were derived, I think I am the first who has attempted it in English, except what Mr. Blount has done in his 'Glossography,' which is but a very small part, and those of a Latin derivation chiefly, beside a small extract of Dr. Skinner's 'Etymologicon.' In his introduction to the second volume he remarks: "I have placed an accent over that syllable on which a particular stress or force of sound is to be laid by the voice in pronouncing." This was the first instance in which any such aid to pronunciation and syllabication was furnished in an English dictionary. The parts of speech were not noted in this nor in any previous English dictionary.

Of this work a writer for the "Encyclopedia Perthensis" said: "It is somewhat surprizing that tho this work (Bailey's Dictionary) is universally known, having gone through at least twenty-six editions since the first edition, dedicated in Latin to Frederick Prince of Wales and his royal sisters (His Majesty George III.'s father and aunts), was published, yet no account whatever has hitherto been given of the learned and laborious author, who excelled Dr. Johnson himself, in industry, at least, by introducing a far greater number of words in his small work of one volume 8vo, than the doctor has inserted in both his volumes folio. We have searched in vain for an account of this learned lexicographer."

Bailey's idea of definitions is best illustrated by examples: 1. "Cat, a Creature well known." 2. "Horse, a Beast well known." 3. "Man, a Creature endued with Reason." These definitions, published in 1721, are not dissimilar to the following from a recent issue of one of the Websterian series: "Heron, any of certain wading birds." "Horse, a well-known hoofed quadruped." "Kite, a well-known contrivance for flying in the air at the end of a string." "Pansy, a wellknown garden plant and flower."

Modesty was not a virtue common to the ancient lexicographers. Wesley, for instance, printed on the title-page of his dictionary which appeared in 1753 the following special notice to his readers: "The author assures you he thinks this is the best English Dictionary in the world"; and added, "many are the mistakes in all the other English dictionaries which I have yet seen, whereas I can truly say I know of none in this!" But the excellent qualities claimed for this work by the Father of Wesleyanism were doomed to eclipse when, two years later, Dr. Samuel Johnson gave his dictionary to the world. Poor Johnson! Penniless on the verge of manhood; diseased, ill-favored, and but half-educated, he was also subject to fits of morbid melancholy and troubled with St. Vitus's dance when, crossing the threshold of his dead father's home, he looked into the world for a living. Later, with Savage, unable to pay for the meanest shelter, he often tramped, footsore and weary, through the streets of London all night, and starved with his friend or shared with him such frugal meal as either was able to obtain. This was the man who is sometimes, but inaccurately, styled the "Father of English Lexicography." Johnson's Dictionary, published April 15, 1755—50,000 words—was based on Nathan Bailey's "Universal Etymological English Dictionary," first published in 1721. To produce his magnum opus he spent seven years of his life and every penny that he could spare. With "little assistance of the learned," he plain

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

tively wrote, so that the only aid which he received was a paper containing twenty etymologies sent him by a person then unknown, he produced the work that made his name famous-far more famous than even the genial Boswell could make it by his biography. The story of Johnson's struggle can not be better illustrated than by the incidents that led to his heroic efforts to give the England of his day the fruit of his knowledge. Johnson was "down on his uppers" when he pocketed his pride and ventured to solicit the help of his quondam patron, the Earl of Chesterfield. The Earl was petulant or peevish when he kept the greatest scholar of his time cooling his heels in his anteroom, among a throng of dependents whom Chesterfield probably dismissed with a paltry pittance. And Chesterfield paid the penalty, for Johnson gave him a well-deserved rebuke when on February 7, 1775, he wrote, among other things: "The notice you have been pleased to take of my labors, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and can not enjoy it; till I am solitary, and can not impart it; till I am known, and do not want it. I hope it is no cynical asperity, not to confess obligations when no benefit has been received; or to be unwilling that the public should consider me as owing that to a patron, which Providence has enabled me to do for myself."

The following account of the way in which Johnson did his work is given by Sir John Hawkins: "He had, for the purpose of carrying on this arduous work, and being near the printers employed in it, taken a handsome house in Gough Square, and fitted up a room in it with desks and other accommodations for amanuenses, whom, to, the number of five or six, he kept constantly under his eye. An interleaved copy of Bailey's Dictionary in folio he made the repository of the several articles, and these he collected by incessant reading of the best authors in our language, in the practise whereof his method was to score with a blacklead pencil the words by him selected, and give them over to his assistants to insert in their places. The books he used for this purpose were what he had in his own collection-a copious, but a miserably ragged one and all such as he could borrow; which latter, if ever they came back to those that lent them, were so defaced as to be scarce worth owning; and yet some of his friends were glad to receive and entertain them as curiosities."

DOCTOR SAMUEL JOHNSON

Improving upon the work of Cotgrave, Johnson introduced into English lexicography the method of illustrating the different significations of words by examples from the best writers; and for this reason, chiefly, his dictionary, from the time of its first publication, has been regarded as a standard for the language. It formed the basis of many smaller works, and, as Walker remarks, it "has been deemed lawful plunder by every subsequent lexicographer."

Of Johnson's Dictionary Lord Brougham said: "He conferred upon English literature the important benefit of the first even tolerably good dictionary of the language, and one the general merit of which may be inferred from the fact that after the lapse of nearly a century filled with monuments of literary labor incalculably multiplied in all directions, no similar work has superseded it." Notwithstanding this eulogy, it is none the less true that Johnson made mistakes; that he misunderstood the province of the lexicographer; that to him his views of men and things were correct, and that those of the world at large were of small consequence. And to these failings Johnson's Dictionary owes the measure of failure by which his work has been judged by those who came after him. That he was a man of strong prejudice his work shows, or he would not have defined the word "excise" as "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"; nor would he have declared that "oats" was "a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people." Some other notable examples of this fault-for fault it

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THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

is, since it is the province of the dictionary to present the language as it is, and not as the lexicographer feels it ought to be-are the definitions of "Puritan,' "pensioner," "Tory," and "Whig." The Puritan he sarcastically declared to be "a sectary pretending to eminent purity of religion," while with him a "pensioner" was a "slave. of state, hired by stipend to obey his master." A "Whig" was "the name of a faction," but a "Tory" was "one who adheres to the antient constitution of the state and the apostolical hierarchy of the Church of England, opposed to a Whig.'

The science of etymology was not thoroughly understood by the early lexicographers. Unfortunately, they too frequently jumped at the conclusion that any foreign word or words that but remotely resembled an English word must have been the parent of the latter. Johnson himself was fond of similar exploits. He derives motley from moth-like, "or, of various colors resembling a moth," and spider from spy-dor-the insect that watches the dor or humble-bee. You

may remember that derivation of curmudgeon. Johnson received, from some unknown source, a letter deriving the word from cœur méchant, or wicked heart-a wild enough guess, which pleased the Doctor so much that he adopted it, giving due credit to "unknown correspondent." Twenty years later, Dr. Ash, preparing a dictionary of his own, was struck by this gem, and transferred it to his own pages. But wishing all the glory of the discovery for himself, he gave no credit to Johnson, and informed a wondering world that curmudgeon was formed from cœur, "unknown," and méchant, "correspondent." The late Professor Skeat, who, in his new Etymological Dictionary (1910), defined the word as "a covetous stingy fellow," says that its etymology is wholly unknown, yet places on record, while dissenting from the etymology preferred by Dr. March, a corruption of "cornmudgin," from "corn," grain, plus old French "muchier," hide. Professor Skeat thought that the spelling was forced, and that the first syllable was not really a derivative of "corn." Dr. Murray, commenting thereon, says that "the occurrence in Holland's 'Livy' of 'cornmudgin' had led to the suggestion that this was the original form, with the meaning 'concealer or hoarder of corn.'" He adds that the fact that the first syllable is "cur," the dog, is worthy of note. Following this up we have "cur," a mean, ill-disposed person, and "mudgeon"