Brian Sawyer

Johnson’s Dictionary Revisited

Though at heart I’m strictly an OED man, and at work I tend to use the more practical Merriam-Webster’s, I’ve always had a special place in my heart for Samuel Johnson’s masterpiece, and I’ve cherished my facsimile copy (never had the $10,000 an original copy would set me back).

I’ve just learned from Slate that a new edition just came out, and I’m all giddy just thinking about it. You have to love a lexicographer (“a writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge”) who had the courage, interest, and patience to write an entire dictionary by himself but also had the modesty to admit that any mistakes were due to “ignorance, Madam, pure ignorance.”