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Johnson’s Dictionary

For the century before Johnson's Dictionary was published in 1775, there had been concern about the state of the English language. There was no standard way of speaking or writing and no agreement as to the best way of bringing some order to the chaos of English spelling. Dr Johnson provided the solution.

There had, of course, been dictionaries in the past, the first of these being a little book of some 120 pages, compiled by a certain Robert Cawdray, published in 1604 under the title A Table Alphabeticall’ of hard usuall English wordes'. Like the various dictionaries that came after it during the seventeenth century, Cawdray's tended to concentrated on ‘scholarly’ words; one function of the dictionary was to enable its student to convey an impression of fine learning.

Beyond the practical need to make order out of chaos, the rise of dictionaries is associated with the rise of the English middle class, who were anxious to define and circumscribe the various worlds to conquer - lexical as well as social and commercial, It is highly appropriate that Dr Samuel Johnson, the very model of an eighteenth-century literary man, as famous in his own time as in ours, should have Johnson himself was stationed on a rickety chair at an 'old crazy deal table* surrounded by a chaos of borrowed books. He was also helped by six assistants, two of whom died whilst the Dictionary was still in preparation.

The work was immense; filling about eighty large notebooks (and without a library to hand). Johnson wrote the definitions of over 40,000 words, and illustrated their many meanings with some 114,000 quotations drawn from English writing on every subject from the Elizabethans to his own time. He did not expect to achieve complete originality. Working to a deadline, he had to draw on the best of all previous dictionaries, and to make his work one of heroic synthesis. In fact it was very much more. Unlike his predecessors, Johnson treated English very practically, as a living language, with many different shades of meaning. He adopted his definitions on the principle of English common law -according to precedent. After its publication, his Dictionary was not seriously rivalled for over a century.

After many vicissitudes the Dictionary was finally published on 15 April 1775. It was instantly recognised as a landmark throughout Europe. This very noble work.' wrote the leading Italian lexicographer. 'will be a perpetual monument of Fame to the Author, an Honour to his own Country in particular, and a general Benefit to Academies of Europe and matched them (everyone knew that forty French academics had taken forty years to produce the first French national dictionary) was cause for much English celebration.

Johnson had worked for nine years, ‘with little assistance of the learned, and without any patronage of the great not in the soft obscurities of retirement, or under the shelter of academic bowers, but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow’. For all its faults and eccentricities his two-volume work is a masterpiece and a landmark, in his own words, 'setting the orthography, displaying the analogy, regulating the structures, and ascertaining the significations of English words'. It is the cornerstone of Standard English, an achievement which, in James Boswell's words,' conferred stability on the language of his country'.

The Dictionary, together with his other writing, made Johnson famous and so well esteemed that his friends were able to prevail upon King George III to offer him a pension. From then on, he was to become the Johnson of folklore.

Questions 4-7

Complete the summary.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS front the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 4-7 on your answer sheet.

In 1764 Dr Johnson accepted the contract to produce a dictionary. Having rented a garret, he took on a number of 4................. , who stood at a long central desk. Johnson did not have a 5..............available to him, but eventually produced definitions of in excess of 40,000 words written down in 80 large notebooks. On publication, the Dictionary was immediately hailed in many European countries as a landmark. According to his biographer, James Boswell, Johnson's principal achievement was to bring 6................to the English language. As a reward for his hard work, he was granted a 7................by the king.

答案与讲解：

长难句练习：

1. Beyond the practical need to make orders out of chaos, the rise of dictionaries is associated with the rise of the English rniddle class, who were anxious to define and circumscribe the various worlds to conquer-lexical as well as social and commercial.

参考译文：除了规范英语混乱状态的实际需要外，英语字典的兴盛也与英国中产阶级的兴起有关。这些中产阶级渴望对各种要征服的坏境进行定义和约束、包括词汇环境、社会环境和商业环境。

知识点:

circumscribe：限制;约束

①The President's power is circumscribed by Congress and the Supreme Court.总统的权利受到国会和最高法院的限制。

②Travel is only one of many instances of circumscribed existence.旅行只不过是生活中受到限制的许多事件之一。

2. After its publication, his Dictionary was not seriously rivalled for over a century.

参考译文：约翰逊的字典出版后，在长达一个多世纪的时间里，都没有出现一本真正能与其相媲美的字典。

知识点：

rival:

1)与……竞争 rival sb. for priority与某人争夺优先权

2)与……匹敌;比得上

No one can rival him in eloquence.没人能敌得过他的口才。

The college' s facilities rival those of Havard and Yale.这所大学的设施可以与哈佛、耶鲁的相媲美。