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If Dr Johnson was writing today surely the internet would have been his best friend.
The man of letters would have been able to get his message across the world in a matter of minutes!

It's hard to believe that it's 250 years since his dictionary was compiled and published. Along with the Bible or other religious texts, it's probably a book that every bookcase holds.

Mind you, with the fast growth of the internet, online dictionaries are now part of everyday life - even your computer programme probably has a spell checker! And it's all thanks to the mighty achievement of this man from Staffordshire.

The man

Johnson was born in Lichfield on September 18th, 1709 - and you can still visit his house there (see our guide to his house).
His father was a book seller, so books and the love of language were in his blood.

Dr Johnson's dictionary wasn't the first to be published, but it's the one that all the poets and authors turned to for help and it's the basis of the books that we use today.

Anniversary

The actual 250th anniversary of the original Dictionary Of The English Language was
on Friday April 15, 2005.
The first edition was a cumbersome 2,300-page volume weighing about 22lbs, the weight of a large turkey. In Johnson's lifetime five further editions were published and a sixth came out when he died.
When it first came out in 1755 it cost £4/10/-, which would be worth around £300 today.

Words words words

Some of Johnson’s witticisms and sarcastic definitions from the dictionary are now famous – and can still raise a laugh. There he defined "opera" as "an exotic and irrational entertainment"

To mark the 250th anniversary, author Henry Hitchings has written Dr Johnson's
Dictionary: The Extraordinary Story Of The Book That Defined The World.
Johnson's definitions were peppered with his own feelings and prejudices, Hitchings observes.
"For example, Johnson wasn't a big fan of people from Scotland, for reasons which are unclear, but his definition of oats is: "a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people"(!)
Johnson is a fascinating character. His life - and livelier quotations - are as famous as his works (remember the hilarious Blackadder episode?)

Things Said About Him

"To illustrate the meanings of words, Johnson supplied 114,000 quotations from books…it made his dictionary into a superior prototype of the internet." John Carey.

In the 19th century the Oxford English Dictionary attempted to replace Johnson's.
There was a feeling that Johnson's dictionary had limitations and that a good dictionary of English shouldn't be made by one person, but by a team of people.
However, around 1,700 of Johnson's definitions remain in the OED, says Hitchings, which proves he was on the right track.Ìý