#johnson's dictionary

[wurzelbertzwerg]

Ever wanted to overpower friends and foes alike with Johnson, but having no printed version of this most useful tome at hand, or at least not a complete version?

Worry not, the internet got you covered ;)

Supported by the University of Central Florida, NEH and Center for Humanities and Digital Research (CHDR) .

And let's face it, even if you don't want to doublecheck the meaning of something you read in one of Austen's novels and aren't a stickler for 100% historical accurate prose ;) ... It's still a ton of fun to just look up words.

It even has a random word function! Isn't that just delightful? :D

[shakespearenews]

A quote from Caesar as the first reference for “bribe” in Samuel Johnson’s dictionary. 

[quotation--marks]

I owned no gilt furniture, armchairs with ebony handles, expensive sofas. Not even the clothes I wore belonged to me. Verse would be my tribute to Corinna though never sufficient, for she deserved to inherit the earth. Happily never sufficient, for I would be provoked writing more and more for her until I became my own little book.

David Dabydeen, Johnson's Dictionary

[quotation--marks]

I became alert only when he arrived at beauty and reclaimed from the book - ‘’the best part of beauty is that which a picture can not express.’ That’s Dr Johnson quoting Bacon, a notable philosopher and logician.’ I immediately recalled in all its minute details the painting in my past massa’s sitting room, of his father, mother and aunt in their opulent setting. I had searched the painting for my mother, as I had latterly searched the sky for utterance, but found nothing. Now Dr Gladstone was telling me that my mother’s very invisibility held meaning. That she was absent from memory and from record was a measure of her beauty. And there was another word which found my mother in the sightless spaces of a painting, at the very corners and sides where the frame covered over the canvas; or at the back, where the canvas was blank and therefore unexamined  by human eyes. ‘Imagination: the power of forming ideal pictures; the power of representing things absent to one’s self,’ it said in the Dictionary. Before, I used to daydream my mother, then scold myself for being unreal, but the Dictionary was telling me that she was beyond presence, beyond ordinary sight and recollection and record. I did not believe it. I wanted to, but in the end my box of coins and bills of sale, and the newspapers tallying goods, were definite articles not demanding of faith.

David Dabydeen, Johnson's Dictionary

[quotation--marks]

‘What do you want of her?’ the mother asked, breaking his spell upon her, for he had by his calmness alone persuaded her that in the world outside her cell and sanctuary hurt could be salved, love flourish, the past be forgiven.

David Dabydeen, Johnson's Dictionary

[quotation--marks]

How I wished to share in Alice’s bounty, hug her, kiss her forehead and feet, utter fine words, but I was too versed in cruelty for such. All the years of journeying, stung by centipedes as I slept in straw, desert scorpions, sea-snakes, churlish men, and hungry, always hungry, me; the dead boy in his pretty box my only solace, and the prospect of a sorcerer. By the time the star brought me here, I was poison-self.

David Dabydeen, Johnson's Dictionary

[quotation--marks]

Canvas is a special cloth; you can’t spoil it with too much real life. Canvas is Christ’s miracle. On canvas the lame walk, the hungry get fish and loaves, water turn into wine, work make a man free.

David Dabydeen, Johnson's Dictionary

[quotation--marks]

The woman sobbed, challenging him to deliver her from evil, and he searched the night sky for wisdom, but the brightest star had eclipsed the light of other stars, like a life feeding off other, more vulnerable lives. There was nothing he could do but witness the rapacity in heaven and on earth. There was nothing he could do, and there was nothing to go back to. And yet he clung to his bag of instruments as frantically as life clung to the sobbing woman. They were useless, he knew, all their miraculous properties so much myth, but that was all there was. The brightest star was all there was, even though it witnessed nothing but a woman’s agony. 

David Dabydeen, Johnson's Dictionary