Browse Items (19 total)

As a young physician, Roget dreamed of creating a “thesaurus”—Greek for “treasury.” After retiring, he divided the English language into a thousand categories, gathered into five groups: Abstract Relations, Space, Matter, Intellect, Volition, and…

Webster struggled to find a publisher for his magnum opus. But finally Sherman Converse agreed, and he sent to Leipzig for the Asian typefaces to print Webster’s etymologies. By February 1826, he had prepared sample pages to promote the book.  Yet a…

The American Dictionary marks a milestone, but it was deeply flawed. Although Webster’s definitions were superb, his etymologies were outlandish: he absurdly traced English words to Arabic, Chaldee, Ethiopic, and Persian. Worse, his entries were…

On this page are draft entries in Webster’s hand for:  bracteate, adj. Furnished with bractes (leaves or scales).
bracted, adj. Same.
brad, n. (a type of nail)
bradypus (a sloth)
brag, v.i. (to boast)
braggadocio (a boastful person) Before…

As soon as Webster finished the Compendious, he turned his thoughts to a successor. By 1809 he had had specimen entries typeset in the hope of enlisting subscribers to his unabridged dictionary. Yet no such specimen sheet has ever been recorded—only…

George Crabb was a barrister and failed clergyman who became a legal scholar, historian, and lexicographer. Of synonymy, he wrote: “not a single writer . . . has treated it in a scientific manner adequate to its importance.” He was nothing if not…

The receipt was issued perhaps for Henry Budd, an alumnus of St. John’s College, Cambridge, who served as chaplain of Bridewell Hospital, London. Though Tooke would live another nine years, he would never publish this projected third volume—which,…

Conder tokens were 18th-century privately minted coins produced to make political statements, to honor citizens, to commemorate events, and to promote businesses. These two were made to celebrate Horne Tooke’s victory in a trial for high treason. The…

Few philological books have had more influence on lexicography than Horne Tooke’s Diversions of Purley—and none have had a worse influence.  At the heart of his book, with two volumes published almost two decades apart, is a fundamentally misguided…