by Catherine Ahearne, Senior Library Assistant, Special Collections and Archives
“Handle them carefully, for words have more power than atom bombs.” -Pearl Strachan Hurd but when your weapon of choice is words you need to know and understand their meaning to derive the full effect from them. This is where dictionaries come to play an important role.
A dictionary is a record of popular culture at the time of publication. Language is not inert, it is constantly changing and evolving, slang becomes mainstream, words become obsolete. So, when words fall out of fashion they are removed from dictionary a practice that still occurs today.
Samuel Johnson bravely undertook to produce the first English Dictionary on the scale of his continental contemporaries, it was a nine-year process and involved heavy editing. It surpassed its predecessors through careful definitions of words and its richness of literary quotations. It is not simply a monumental dictionary but a living literary and critical text. Here in the Russell Library we have a copy of the A dictionary of the English language. 11th ed. corrected and revised / with considerable additions from the eighth edition of the original.
DeMaria “A definition is the only way whereby the meaning of words can be known without leaving room for contest about it”. Our use and understanding of definitions change over time. I am going to examine some changes from the definitions laid down in the early dictionaries.
When searching the pamphlets in the collection of the Russell Library you will often come across the word Apology in the title:
- An apology for the system of public and classical education
- An apology for a work entitled Contrasts : being a defence of the assertions advanced in that publication against the various attacks lately made upon it
- An apology for the system of Wesleyan Methodism : being a reply to Mr. Mark Robinson’s Observations on the same subject
Today we would associate this word as an act of saying that you are sorry for a wrong that you have done. But in 1799 it was a defense or excuse, so each of the pamphlets is a defense of the topic in question.
Weird is not in the 1799 edition of the dictionary. In modern English this word is known to mean strange, unusual, or not natural. In special collections there is a title “ The Weird of the ‘Silken Thomas: an episode of Anglo-Irish history, (1900) Weird is in fact a word of Scottish origin, and means “a person’s destiny”. Therefore, the title of the book means “The Destiny of the Silken Thomas.”
Infatuated is a word that we are all familiar having a verystrongfeelingofloveorattractionfor someone or something that is short lived. Johnson’s dictionary defines the meaning as “to strike with folly; to deprive understanding”. Here is a 1680 sheet that uses infatuate in the way that Johnson understood it. The sick may have advice for nothing. Though the world is daily pester’d by unskilful pretenders to physick, who infatuate the people with their printed papers, wherein they pretend to perform matters beyond reason.
Womanise we know to mean a person who has temporary relationships with women, womanise in 1799 had a very different connotation, it meant to emasculate; to effeminate; to soften.
We can recognize the word livid to be associated with anger and temper. But in the 18th century it meant to discolour with a blow; black and blue. While not identical in meaning you can associate one meaning with the emotion and the other with the action of the emotion described.
There are also words that cannot help but incite an emotional reaction Excise for example Johnson describes as “A hateful tax levied upon commodities and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid”.
A word’s power is derived from its meaning and what the reader understands each word to mean. So, as we go about our lives, we need to be mindful of the words we use.
“Be careful with your words. Once they are said, they can be only forgiven, not forgotten.” -Unknown
