The next stage of development was a feeling that there was a need for a "standard dictionary"

The next step in the advancement of English dictionaries was prompted by a feeling among literary men and booksellers of the need for a "standard dictionary", the purpose of which should be to "fix the language" and to prevent its deterioration.

This erroneous conception of the nature of speech was not confined to England, but the example had already been set by the Accademia della Crusca in Italy and the L'Académie française in France.

The French had in fact published a dictionary, the fruit of twenty years of preparation and forty of labor, from which all technical terms were rigidly excluded, as well as all other words which did not receive the stamp of academic approval.

We now realize that such a notion is a perverted one, and that a dictionary should be an inventory of the language and not a "Who's Who?" of diction. At the time, however, the plan met with general approval, and in 1747, a syndicate of London booksellers contracted with Samuel Johnson to produce such a book within three years for the consideration of 1500 guineas.

Johnson thereupon addressed a memorial on the "Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language" to Lord Chesterfield, in the hope of securing his patronage for he enterprise. It was not until Johnson had nearly completed his great task that the noble lord paid any attention to the matter, and then his tardy aid and encouragement were rejected by the indignant lexicographer.

The work had in fact taken eight and a half years, and the greater part of the stipend had been exhausted in the pay of six amanuenses [those employed to take dictation or to copy manuscripts] and in other incidental expenses.

The feature which made Johnson's Dictionary epoch-making was the attention given to the historical development of the language and the illustrations of the uses of words by well-selected quotations. These quotations were entirely supplied by Johnson and were for the most part made from memory; but though frequently not verbally exact, they are almost always sufficiently so to be entirely adequate to their purpose.

Johnson also prided himself on his etymologies, but his original contributions in that area have gone the way of the greater number of those which preceded the modern days of scientific etymology.

There are some definitions in which the editor allowed his sense of humor or his personal feelings to get the better of strict accuracy and literary decorum. Thus, he defines a lexicographer as "a maker of dictionaries, a harmless drudge," and a pensioner as "a Slave of the State, hired by a stipend to obey his master."

Other well-known examples by Johnson include oats, whig, tory, and excise, which is said to be a "hateful tax, levied upon commodities and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but by wretches hired by those to whom the excise is paid." His work was not free from errors, but he in part disarmed criticism in his Preface by freely admitting their possibility.

Johnson was enough of a scholar to acknowledge his slips, and when a lady once asked him how he came to define pastern as "the knee of a horse," he replied, "Ignorance, Madam, pure ignorance." [A pastern is part of a horse's foot between the fetlock and hoof; a fetlock being a projection on the lower part of the leg of a horse above and behind the hoof].

The value of Johnson's work was immediately recognized and it passed into a second edition within a year. It was some forty years, however, in wholly supplanting Bailey's Dictionary and others of that type; but it finally became the standard and held the field for many years.