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The signification of WORDS how varied

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By Johnson, Samuel

Samuel Johnson: Johnson on Demand

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THE SIGNIFICATION OF WORDS HOW VARIED (1749)

[Editorial Introduction]

Johnson signed the contract for his Dictionary of the English Language on 18 June 1746.1 He had finished his preliminary “Short Scheme for compiling a new Dictionary of the English language” a bit earlier, on April 30. On 6 August 1748, Thomas Birch reported to Philip Yorke that the amanuenses “have almost transcribed the authorities.”2 It is clear, then, that Johnson was at work on the Dictionary and had begun collecting his illustrative quotations in February of 1749 when the following article appeared in the Gentleman’s Magazine, in the form of a letter to Edward Cave, the proprietor, known in the publication as Mr. Urban (XIX.65–66). The letter is signed with the initials “W. S.,” which seem to point to William Strahan, the printer of the Dictionary.3 Strahan is not known to have written for the Gentleman’s Magazine, however, nor was Johnson known to have used the initials W. S., so the initials may not be good clues to discovering authorship in this case. Whoever wrote the piece was familiar with the “authorities” that Johnson was collecting at this time, as the notes below will show. Johnson may have given some notes and quotations to the author, or he may be the author himself. The latter seems more likely to us, although there is not enough independent, clearly Johnsonian prose to make a positive identification.4

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The signification of WORDS how varied

Mr Urban,

One of the most peculiar circumstances relating to language is the mutation of the sense of words in different ages, so that the same word to which a good meaning was formerly affixed, may now have a signification directly opposite. This happens so universally, that, I believe, no language, whether antient or modern, has been exempted from it; but the change proceeds so slowly and insensibly, that the life of one man is not sufficient to afford him an opportunity of perceiving the change. With regard to our own language, if we look into those authors who flourish’d a century and half ago, numerous instances will occur; and the reading of the following passage in Turberville’s 2d Eclogue, a gentleman who was educated at Oxford, and wrote in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, led me into this observation.

Among the rest of all the route, A passing proper lass, A white-hair’d trull of twenty yeares, Or neere about, there was; In stature passing all the rest, A gallant girl for hewe; To be compar’d to townish nimphs, So faire she was to viewe. Her forehead cloth with gold was purld A little, here and there; With copper clasp about her neck A kerchief did she weare, That reached to her breast and paps: The wench about her wast, A gallant gaudy riband had, That girt her body fast.1

Page 195

Here we find the poet in describing an innocent country beauty, does not scruple to call her a trull, which now signifies a strumpet. Dr Swift says,

So Mævius, when he drain’d his skull, To celebrate some suburb trull; His similies in order set, And ev’ry crambo he could get; And gone thro’ all the common places, Worn out by wits who rhime on faces, Before he could his poem close, The lovely nymph had lost her nose.2

In the same manner Turberville puts wench for a young woman, which is now rarely used, but by way of contempt, and seems to be threatned with the same fate that trull has received.3 The alteration of knave, which formerly signify’d a servant,4 and of villain, a sort of slave, is generally known.5Pedant anciently meant a schoolmaster; thus Shakespear in his Twelfth Nighta mentions

A pedant that keeps a school i’th’ church.

But this word now gives an idea of a stiff, formal, and unpolished man of literature. Thus Addison in his whig examiner:

The remaining part of the preface has so much of the pedant, and so little of the conversation of man in it, that I shall pass over it.

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And Swift:

In learning let a nymph delight,

The pedant gets a mistress by’t.6

In like manner, leech anciently signify’d a physician.

And straightway sent with careful diligence,

To fetch a leech, the which had great insight

In that disease of grieved conscience;

And well could cure the same: his name was Patience.

Spenser’s Fairy Queen.

Even Dryden uses it in this sense.

Wise leeches will not vain receipts obtrude,

While growing pains pronounce the humours crude;

Deaf to complaints they wait upon the ill,

’Till some safe crisis authorize their skill.7

Roscommon has thus described the insect which has now usurped this name by being used in bleeding.

Sticking like leeches till they burst with blood.8

Leechcraft was also used for physick.

We study speech, but others we persuade,

We leechcraft learn, but others cure with it.

Sir John Davis.9

The word dame, says Dr Watts, in his Logick, originally signify’d a mistress of a family, who was a lady, and it is used still in the English law to signify a lady; but in common use now-a-days

Page 197

it represents a farmer’s wife, or a mistress of a family of the lower rank in the country.1

Tho’ the cause of such mutations may be principally ascribed to the caprice of mankind, yet much may be imputed to words being debased by vulgar use. An instance of this kind we have in the word lawyer, a name vulgarly given to every the2 meanest pettifogger;3 every farrier, little apothecary, or surgeon’s mate, is also commonly honoured with the title of doctor; even chimney doctors are become frequent.4 So that doctor and lawyer will, perhaps, in time undergo the same change, with leech and pedant, though physician and counsellor still retain their dignity.

However, it is hoped, that our language will be more fixed, and better established when the publick is favoured with a new dictionary, undertaken with that view, and adapted to answer several other valuable purposes; a work now in great forwardness.

W. S.

Page 198

Editorial Notes

1 Life, I.182–83; Hawkins, Life, p. 208n.

2 Allen Reddick, The Making of Johnson’s Dictionary, 1746–1773 (1990; rev. ed., 1996), p. 42, citing British Library Add MS 35397, f. 140. Cf. Sledd and Kolb, p. 143.

3 Arthur Sherbo seriously considers this possibility in “Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary: A Preliminary Puff,” Modern Philology, 31 (1952), 91–93.

4 Reddick treats this piece and argues that SJ “had a hand in the preparation” of it (The Making of Johnson’s Dictionary, p. 42). Kolb and DeMaria came to a similar conclusion but decided against including the piece in Johnson on the English Language (Yale, XVIII) because “the writing is not irrefutably Johnson’s, and the quotations, which certainly come from Johnson’s labors, belong to the body of, not the preliminaries to, the Dictionary” (pp. xi–xii).

1 George Turberville, “The ii. Egloge entituled Fortunatus,” in The Eglogs of the Poet B[aptista] Mantuan Carmelitan, turned into English verse” (1567), fols. 14r–v. Dictionary includes the first eight lines, with slight changes in illustration of trull, sense 2. SJ comments, “It seems to have had at first at least a neutral sense; a girl; a lass; a wench.” SJ cites Baptista Spagnuoli Mantuan in his brief history of pastoral poetry in his Life of Ambrose Philips (Yale, XXIII.1312–13).

2 “To Stella, Who Collected and Transcribed His Poems,” ll. 71–78. In Dictionary, SJ quotes the first four and last two lines in illustration of trull, sense 1, and the first four lines alone in illustration of crambo (“A play at which one gives a word, to which another finds a rhyme; a rhyme”).

3 In Dictionary, SJ traces the meaning of wench from “1. A young woman” to “2. A young woman in contempt; a strumpet” to “3. A strumpet.”

4 In Dictionary, SJ defines knave as “1. A boy; a male child” and “2. A servant,” adding to the second definition the remark, “Both of these are obsolete.”

5 SJ defines villain as “One who held by a base tenure” (Dictionary, sense 1); he illustrates the meaning with a quotation from John Davies: “The Irish inhabiting the lands fully conquered, being in condition of slaves and villains, did render a greater revenue, than if they had been made the king’s free subjects” (Historical Relations, or, A Discovery of the True Causes Why Ireland Was Never Intirely Subdu’d nor Brought Under Obedience of the Crown of England [1666], p. 130).

a Twelfth Night emend.] TwelfthNight GM

6 In Dictionary, SJ defines pedant as “1. A schoolmaster” and “2. A man vain of low knowledge; a man awkwardly ostentatious of his literature.” He uses the quotation from Twelfth Night (III. ii.75–76) under sense 1, and the quotations from Addison (Whig Examiner, no. 1, 14 September 1710) and Swift (Cadenus and Vanessa, ll. 742–43) under sense 2.

7 In Dictionary, SJ’s first definition of leech is “A physician; a professor of the art of healing; whence we still use cowleech.” He adduces the passage from Spenser (Faerie Queene, I.10.xvi), omitting the first line and the first two words of the second line. He also uses the above passage from Dryden (Astraea Redux, ll. 175–78), omitting the second line and the last three words of the fourth.

8 Illustrating his second definition of leech in Dictionary (“A kind of small water serpent”), SJ uses the line from Roscommon (Horace’s Art of Poetry, third to last line) plus the next half line.

9 In Dictionary, SJ defines leechcraft as “The art of healing” and cites these lines from Davies (Nosce Teipsum, “Of Humane Knowledge,” ll. 101–2).

1 SJ refers to Watts’s Logic (8th ed., 1745), p. 50, which appears in illustration of dame in Dictionary (sense 1). SJ’s copy of Watts (8th ed.) marked up for inclusion in the Dictionary is in the British Library (C.28.g.9).

2 Every the: a now obsolete expression meaning “even the,” OED, s.v. every, 1c. This sense is not in Dictionary.

3 In Dictionary, SJ does not render the mutation of lawyer. He defines pettifogger, however, as “A petty small-rate lawyer.”

4 SJ’s first two definitions of doctor in Dictionary display some of the mutation he remarks here. He says in sense 1, “In its original import it means a man so well versed in his faculty, as to be qualified to teach it,” but sense 2 is merely “A man skilled in any profession.”

Transcription

Document Details

Document TitleThe signification of WORDS how varied

AuthorJohnson, Samuel

Creation Date1749

Publ. DateN/A

Alt. TitleN/A

Contrib. AuthorN/A

ClassificationSubject: Words; Subject: Language; Subject: Usage; Subject: Linguistics; Subject: Dictionary; Genre: Philology; Genre: Linguistic; pseud: W. S.

PrinterN/A

PublisherEdward Cave

Publ. PlaceLondon

VolumeSamuel Johnson: Johnson on Demand

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