The Early 18th Century
The first half of the 18th century saw the broadening of lexicography from inkhorn terms to some approximation of the entire English vocabulary.
At the same time, compilers wrestled with differentiating a dictionary from an encyclopedia. During this era, dictionaries developed many features that we associate with the form now—distinctively printed headwords, numbered senses, cross-references—which is to say that early-18th-century dictionaries are the first ones that seem recognizably modern.
POSTHUMOUS POTPOURRI
Edward Cocker. Cocker’s English Dictionary: interpreting the most refined and difficult words in divinity, philosophy, law, physick, mathematicks, husbandry, mechanicks, &c. John Hawkins ed. London: Printed for T. Norris et al., 1715. 2d ed.
A teacher of writing and arithmetic, Cocker ventured into publishing with copybooks for schoolchildren. Cocker’s English Dictionary, which first appeared 28 years after Cocker’s death, shows confusion about what a dictionary is. Though small, it’s not principally a wordbook but a gallimaufry of information, with spans of entries such as Folkston (a town in Suffolk), Fons solis (the fountain of the sun), and Fountainbleau (the French king’s palace). The compilers—whoever they were—thought dictionaries should contain not just the meanings of words but knowledge of all sorts.
Ex coll. Karolyne & Bryan A. Garner. HHD no. 22
SCIENTIST, NOT SCIOLIST
John Harris. Lexicon Technicum: or, An Universal English Dictionary of Arts and Sciences. London: Printed for Dan. Brown et al., 1704.
Harris’s Lexicon Technicum, which was impressively au courant with the latest in microscopy and Newtonian physics, has been called the first encyclopedia of science and technology. The categories of “dictionary” and “encyclopedia” had yet to be worked out. Harris mixes entries of just a few lines with discursive essays that stretch to pages. Blasting his predecessors in both England and France, the preface showed later lexicographers the importance of clear and comprehensible definitions for the latest scientific and technical terminology.
Ex coll. Karolyne & Bryan A. Garner. HHD no. 23
NOT YOUR FATHER’S GLOSSOGRAPHIA
Glossographia Anglicana Nova; or, A Dictionary, Interpreting Such Hard Words of whatever Language, as are at present used in the English Tongue. London: Dan. Brown et al., 1707.
This Glossographia—no relation to Blount’s book of the same title from 1656—focuses especially on words used in the learned professions. Its treatment of technical vocabulary is especially strong: liquidescency, lispound, litation, lithontripicks. But plenty of familiar words—listless, litany, literate, litigation—show that the dictionary isn’t exclusively concerned with inkhornisms.
Much about the work is derivative, and the compiler admits as much. But it’s important in being among the earliest properly illustrated English dictionaries, with dozens of woodcuts showing heraldic escutcheons.
Ex coll. Karolyne & Bryan A. Garner. HHD no. 24
DEFINING APOTHECARY/PHYSICIAN
John Quincy. Lexicon Physico-Medicum: or, A New Physical Dictionary. London, 1719.
John Quincy studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh at a time of intellectual ferment in the natural sciences. His most enduring work is this Lexicon, a thorough updating of Bartolomeo Castelli’s Lexicon Medicum (1598) in the light of modern discoveries. Although Quincy’s book was an important dictionary in its own right, it had an even more important lexicographic legacy: most of the medical entries in Johnson’s Dictionary depend on Quincy, who is cited by name more than 300 times (and probably appears nearly as often without citation).
Ex coll. Karolyne & Bryan A. Garner. HHD no. 25
PROLIFIC PHILOLOGOS
N[athan] Bailey. An Universal Etymological English Dictionary. London: E. Bell et al., 1721.
Nathan Bailey was the most important English lexicographer before Johnson. His early publications grew out of his experience as a schoolmaster, including a Latin textbook that went through 22 authorized editions.
The Universal Etymological English Dictionary, the first of his dictionaries, leans heavily on earlier works for its definitions and etymologies, but it covers more of the English vocabulary than any predecessor had done. Bailey introduced several innovations into English lexicography, among them printing headwords in CAPITAL LETTERS, making it easier to scan columns of type.
Ex coll. Karolyne & Bryan A. Garner. HHD no. 26
THE 60,000-WORD MILESTONE
Nathan Bailey. Dictionarium Britannicum; or, A more Compleat Universal Etymological Dictionary than any Extant. London: T. Cox, 1730.
Bailey’s second major dictionary, the Dictionarium Britannicum, is a significant advance over its predecessor. Definitions are still perfunctory—crow, “a bird well known”—but he justifiably claimed to treat “several 1000 English Words and Phrases, in no English Dictionary before extant.”
An expanded edition (1736) covered 60,000 words, making it the most extensive English dictionary for decades to come: even Johnson, who used the Dictionarium in writing his own work, didn’t surpass Bailey’s headword count. Posthumous editions of Bailey competed with Johnson in the marketplace through century’s end.
Ex coll. Karolyne & Bryan A. Garner. HHD no. 26
AN ACORN FAR FROM THE TREE
Benjamin Norton Defoe. A New English Dictionary. London: John Brindley, Olive Payne, et al., 1735.
Daniel Defoe’s last letter describes his many “insupportable sorrows.” Among these was that his estranged son Benjamin, who had abandoned law to become a hack writer, was languishing in prison for seditious writing.
Benjamin produced a dictionary with all the hallmarks of Grub Street: it was an abridgment of Bailey, omitting two-thirds of the vocabulary and all the etymologies and pronunciations. Publishers repeatedly issued the book with different authorial attributions—Defoe (1735), Anonymous (1737), J. Sparrow (1739), James Manlove (1741)—hoping one of them would catch on. None did.
Ex coll. Karolyne & Bryan A. Garner. HHD no. 29
FINALLY GETTING THEIR DUE
Thomas Dyche and William Pardon. A New General English Dictionary. London: Richard Ware, 1735.
The schoolmaster and textbook author Dyche died in 1727, leaving A New General English Dictionary unfinished. It was completed over the next eight years by one William Pardon, of whom little is known.
Dyche & Pardon’s effort has been called “largely derivative from Bailey’s dictionaries” and “consciously downmarket.” But their definitions are often more informative than those in dictionaries of comparable size, and they demonstrate real thought about the practical needs of users. Dyche and Pardon improved the art of defining.
Ex coll. Karolyne & Bryan A. Garner. HHD no. 30
PRODIGIOUS POLYHISTOR
Robert Page. Portrait of Benjamin Martin. Colored stipple engraving from the Encyclopædia Londinensis, 1815.
Martin, the son of a farmer, was an inventor with an inventor’s temperament: he sought out problems and systematically set about solving them. He developed a portable microscope, a clock mechanism, and a bilge pump he tried unsuccessfully to sell to the Royal Navy.
He brought that tinkerer’s spirit to lexicography: after enumerating the “Requisites of a Genuine English Dictionary,” he surveyed English dictionaries published to date, noted where they failed, and worked to rectify shortcomings. Lingua Britannica Reformata is a model of planning and organization.
Ex coll. Karolyne & Bryan A. Garner. HHD no. 33
ECLIPSED WHILE RISING
Benjamin Martin. Lingua Britannica Reformata; or, A New English Dictionary. London: J. Hodges et al., 1754. 2d ed.
Although Martin strove for comprehensive coverage of all the common words in the language, he refused to swell his word count with inkhornisms never used in real life. His typography, though unattractive, is innovative, with hanging indentation to promote skimming, italics to show words not yet fully naturalized, and stressed syllables marked with his own system of single and double accents. He probably borrowed the idea for numbered senses from Johnson’s Plan (1747). Bailey’s misfortune was to publish just before Johnson’s Dictionary appeared in 1755. It drove Martin from the business.
Ex coll. Karolyne & Bryan A. Garner. HHD no. 33