Surprising, colorful, and long-forgotten entries from the most famous dictionary in the history of the English language

Samuel Johnson’s best-known work, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755), is the most influential and idiosyncratic lexicon ever written and was used by Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, the Brontës and the Brownings, Thomas Hardy and Oscar Wilde. This anthology includes 4,000 of the most representative, entertaining, and historically fascinating entries, covering subjects from fashion to food, science to sex, and given in full with original spelling and examples of usage from Shakespeare to Milton.

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) was an English poet, essayist, biographer, lexicographer, and critic, and the subject of James Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson.
David Crystal is a renowned linguist who has been described as “a sort of latter-day Johnson” (The Times Higher Education Supplement). He is an honorary professor of linguistics at the University of Wales, Bangor, and the editor of The Penguin Factfinder.

Imprint: Penguin Classics
Distributor: Penguin Group USA, Inc
Publication Date: 10-30-2007
Pages: 704
Measurements: 7.80in X 5.20in X 1.22in X 1.07lb