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Article: JOHNSON'S DICTIONARY RETAINS ITS EDGE IN ERA OF FLOPDOODLES.(Editorial)(Column)
- Article from:
- The Cincinnati Post (Cincinnati, OH)
- Article date:
- September 15, 2003
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Byline: David L. Ulin
Whatever happened to the English language? It's a question I could imagine Samuel Johnson asking if he were alive today. The old lexicographer and author -- who once defined himself as "(a) writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words" -- believed in nothing so much as the specificity of language, the idea that every word in English had both its meaning and its use.
These days, however, we've lost sight of this notion, reducing words to instruments of imprecision, tools to manipulate point of view. How much can words mean, after all, when one ...