# Samuel Johnson **Entity class:** Person (English lexicographer and writer, 1709–1784) **Domain:** Lexicography / English Letters **Concept Hub:** [[wiki/Lexicographic Succession|Lexicographic Succession]] ## Definition **Samuel Johnson compiled *A Dictionary of the English Language* (London, 1755), the reference work that served as the English-speaking world's standard for more than a century and the British authority that [[wiki/Noah Webster|Noah Webster]]'s *American Dictionary* (1828) set out to replace for Americans.** Johnson produced it as a private scholar working for a syndicate of London booksellers rather than for an academy; its roughly 42,000 entries were illustrated with quotations from English authors. ## The Preface Johnson's preface of 1755 concedes the limits of lexicographic command: "I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas." The passage stands at the head of the tradition this corpus reads through [[wiki/Semantic Jurisdiction|semantic jurisdiction]]: the dictionary as the instrument through which a people's ideas are fixed. ## Relationships - **Successors and rivals:** [[wiki/An American Dictionary of the English Language|An American Dictionary of the English Language]] · [[wiki/Oxford English Dictionary|Oxford English Dictionary]]. - **Concepts:** [[wiki/Lexicographic Succession|Lexicographic Succession]] · [[wiki/Lexical Omission|Lexical Omission]] · [[wiki/Language|Language]]. - **Source article:** [[articles/war with empire/Authorship of the West|Authorship of the West]]. ## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts > “I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote.” > **— Samuel Johnson**, *Preface to A Dictionary of the English Language, 1755* [[reminders/Information/Words Are the Daughters of Earth and Things Are the Sons of Heaven by Samuel Johnson|Words Are the Daughters of Earth and Things Are the Sons of Heaven by Samuel Johnson]] ## Sources / Provenance - Samuel Johnson, [Preface to A Dictionary of the English Language](https://jacklynch.net/Texts/preface.html) (1755), ed. Jack Lynch (accessed September 22, 2026).