Site features, announcements, vocabulary, observations-- from the team of the NEH-funded Johnson's Dictionary Online. RT does not imply endorsement. Also on 🧵. johnsonsdictionaryonline.com
Johnson's Dictionary Online
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Superannuation. n.s. [from superannuate.] The state of being disqualified by years.
johnsonsdictionaryonline.com/1773/superan...
Samuel Johnson was of an entirely different disposition. He was a conservative, a defender of church and state in England. And so the tone of “Rasselas” is different than that of “Candide.” It is, like Johnson himself, melancholy...
ashland.news/relocations-...
“Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” So goes Samuel Johnson’s insight, oft-quoted since 1777. (It was a diarist’s musing; Johnson was not in danger of dangling.) artsfuse.org/329945/book-...
However . . . you do find "shory" in Johnson's Dictionary.
johnsonsdictionaryonline.com/views/search...
To Untread. v.a. To tread back; to go back in the same steps.
We will untread the steps of damned flight,
And, like a bated and retired flood,
Leaving our rankness and irregular course,
Stoop low within those bounds we have o’erlook’d.
Shakesp.
johnsonsdictionaryonline.com/1755/untread...
As Letty finds out, the story revolves around the first compiler of an English dictionary, Dr Samuel Johnson. When published in 1755, it didn't include any words starting with "X".
And it is this fact... which sets Letty on her hunt.
uk.news.yahoo.com/norwich-auth...
While the first modern English dictionary, A Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson, was compiled in 1755, the modern Chinese equivalent has a much shorter history.
www.theworldofchinese.com/2026/06/a-re...
Sea shanties, folk songs, dialect poetry, the journals of naturalists — these are the places where a word like "shory" would have had a chance. It's not a word you find in Samuel Johnson's dictionary. vocal.media/01/shory-mea...
Burrel Fly. [from bourreler, Fr. to execute; to torture.] An insect, called also oxfly, gadbee, or breeze.
Dict.
johnsonsdictionaryonline.com/1755/burrel_...
FICO. n.s. [Italian.] An act of contempt done with the fingers, expressing a fig for you.
Having once recovered his fortress, he then gives the fico to his adversaries.
Carew’s Survey of Cornwall.
johnsonsdictionaryonline.com/1773/fico_ns
