

Welcome! What led you to Johnson’s Dictionary today? Let us know by writing to Dr. Beth Young byoung@ucf.edu To look up a word in the complete dictionary, click "Page View" above, then use the pull-down menus to find the right page. The U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities has funded revisions to this website that will greatly enhance its reliability and functionality. For a brief summary, see here. For more information, please contact Dr. Beth Rapp Young (beth.young@ucf.edu)



Follow Us on Facebook and Twitter for updates! Project News A transcribed, XML-encoded text of Samuel Johnson’s 1755 folio edition of A Dictionary of the English Language has been licensed to our project under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) by Ian Lancashire, editor, Lexicons of Early Modern English (LEME), the University of Toronto. We look forward to releasing our edition of the 1755 edition online in fall 2020, as planned, and wish to thank our colleagues in Canada for their generous help. LEME anticipates release of its 1755 Johnson encoded transcription sometime in 2021.

Johnson’s Dictionary Online Word of the Year for 2019 is "To Commence"



This word is twice appropriate:

1. The first-ever announced Word of the Year from Johnson’s historic dictionary



2. The year that saw the beginning of an all-new online edition of Johnson’s Dictionary



When Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language appeared in 1755, it swiftly became the most influential dictionary in Britain. Johnson’s definitions are famed for their pithiness and humor, viz. his definitions of lexicographer: “a harmless drudge,” and oats: “A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.” By the turn of the 19th century, it had become the standard English language dictionary, not only in Britain, but also in America and other English-speaking colonies.



This dictionary was the first in English to systematically illustrate definitions with quotations, and by doing so, it helped establish a canon of English literature. It is still widely used, not only by scholars and teachers of literature and language but also by historians, philosophers, and even U.S. Supreme Court Justices exploring precise meanings of words for the Founding generation.



The project team at JohnsonsDictionaryOnline.com, with generous support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and contributions from the Cordell Collection of Dictionaries and the Lexicography of Early Modern English project, is working behind the scenes to create a complete online edition with advanced search capabilities. The first stage will go online in Fall 2020.