3 period
As you can see in Samuel Johnson writing piece called “A dictionary of the English language” he uses his imagination and his knowledge to give these words a meaning. Also he uses his humor in the meanings of these words as you can see there is one word that surprises me that is the one stammel in which he writes “from this word I know not the meaning”. When I read this I laughed and think that Johnson has a good humor.
Another thing you can see in Samuel Jackson’s dictionary that there are errors of facts which you can see in many of the words and its meanings. Like for example in the word alligator has in its meaning that is a crocodile that is like saying that a ball is an sphere that are synonyms that has no sense. Another word that has error of fact is mushroom in which the definition says it is a director of a company and you know that it’s not the meaning of the word mushroom. Like these words you can find more in the dictionary and also you can see some words that have close meaning to the real one.
Also in Samuel Johnson writing you can see that he refers to slang as “low words” that means that these words have no etymology or reason to be there are invented or taken from the nothing and given a meaning that is suitable for the person that use it.
In Jackson’s writing you tend to see his humor in some of the definitions he wrote like in the word stammel an I have said at the beginning that is kind of funny also in the word torpedo you can see that he refers to it as a fish and you know that has no sense at all. Another thing you can see in Samuel Jackson dictionary is his political and religious view that is given in the word Tory which its definition is one who adheres to the ancient constitution of the state, and the apostolically hierarchy of the Church of England, opposed to a whig.
In my opinion I think that language has not changed drastically from the time Samuel lived to today. I think that language has changed a little and new words have been introduced but it has not been an amazing change in it.
These dictionary puts me to think about how you know what a word means and how it should be pronounced and that drives me to the conclusion that the people who has studied history and the ancient books of the civilizations should be the ones that should decide what a word means because they know the roots and where they come from also to decide how a word should be pronounced should be a person that has studied the use of words and its pronunciation a long time.
