The first English dictionary, Schemi e mappe concettuali di Inglese

Scarica The first English dictionary e più Schemi e mappe concettuali in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! The first English dictionary The first dictionary of the English Language While the Renaissance had been faced with the problem of a standard spelling and of borrowing new words from the classical languages and Italian to enrich English, in the 18th century many people felt that it was necessary to establish a standard language, as had been done for French and Italian. The way was paved by Ephraim Chambers' Cyclopaedia (1728), the first modern encyclopaedia and the model for the epoch-making Encyclopédie (1751-76) by the Enlightenment French writers Diderot and D'Alembert. In 1740 a group of London publishers asked the most learned writer of the age, Samuel Johnson (1709-84) to compile a dictionary of the English language. Johnson worked at the dictionary from 1746 to its publication in 1755. The amount of reading Johnson did in compiling the dictionary was impressive. This shows in the size of the work (43,000 words) and in the number of quotations he used to illustrate the meanings of the words. This procedure gave the dictionary a historical basis; great writers became the authorities in matters of language. Johnson's dictionary also covered etymology. Johnson's definitions reflect his many prejudices; the conservative satirist and the nationalist are clearly discernible behind some of the entries.