CHAPTER XII.

A

A DESULTORY DENUNCIATION OF ENGLISH

DICTIONARIES.*

DICTIONARY is an explanatory word catalogue; and a perfect one will contain the entire literary and colloquial vocabulary of a language; that is, every simple word, and every compound word with a single and peculiar meaning, having the authority of usage respectable for antiquity, generality, or the eminence of the user. It would seem that such a catalogue could be certainly made, patient research and a not very remarkable degree of learning being the only requisites to its making. But, in fact, an absolutely perfect dictionary of any living language does not exist, and perhaps will never exist, for the reason that it cannot be produced.

*In the first sentence of this chapter as it was originally published (in the "Galaxy" for May, 1869), I mentioned that, but a short time before the writing of it, I had heard, for the first time, of Trench's pamphlet, "On some Deficiencies in our English Dictionaries," of which I had until then in vain sought a sight, either as a buyer or a borrower. Since that time - - owing to the kindness of one of the proprietors of Brotherhead & Company's Library—I have had an opportunity of reading the dean's criticism. The differences between my reverend predecessor's presentation of the subject and my own arise chiefly from the difference of the ideals we each had in mind. His dictionary is a philological history of the language, with illustrative examples; mine, a hand-book of every-day reference for the general reader. I have modified none of my opinions since reading Archbishop Trench s pamphlet; but I have obtained the advantage of citing his judgement in support of my own or several important points.

Bailey's "Universal Etymological English Dictionary" was the first worthy attempt at the making of a word-book of our language; and it was a very creditable work for the time of its publication, A. D. 1726. For those who care to do more about language than to see how "the dictionary" says a word should be spelled, or what it means, Bailey's work has never been entirely superseded. There was some reason that the compiler should say that he had enriched his book with "several thousand English words and phrases in no English dictionary before extant;" for the English dictionaries that preceded his were so small and deficient, that, as representations of the vocabulary of our language, they were of little worth. But the boasting of subsequent dictionary-makers, like most other boasting, is empty and ridiculous in proportion to the magnitude of its pretensions. When we are told that Webster's Dictionary contains sixteen thousand words not found in any similar preceding work, and then that the Imperial Dictionary contains fifteen thousand words more than Webster's, and yet again. that the Supplement to the Imperial Dictionary contains twenty thousand words more than the body of the work, we might well believe that our language spawns words as herrings spawn eggs, and that a mere catalogue of its component parts would soon fill a shelf in an ordinary library, were it not that when we come to examine these additions of thousands and tens of thousands of words thus set forth as made in each new dictionary, and in each new edition of each dictionary, we find that not one in a hundred of the added words, hardly

one in a thousand, is really a before uncatalogued item of the English vocabulary. Our estimate of the worth of an addition that proceeds by columns of four figures is further lowered by the discovery that these dictionaries, with all their ponderous bulk and verbal multitudinousness, do not fully represent the English of literature or of common life; that they give no aid to the reading of some of our standard authors; that while they set forth, with wearisome superfluity and puerile iteration, that upon which every one who has sense and knowledge enough to use a dictionary at all, needs no information, they pass by as obsolete, or vulgar, or colloquial, or what not, that upon which people of intelligence and education do need instruction from the special students of language; and that, while they spot their pages with foreign words and phrases, the use of which by some writers has shown, with a superficial knowledge of other tongues, a profound ignorance of their own, they neglect home-born words that have been in use since English was written or spoken.

That works to which the foregoing objections can be justly made as they may be, in a greater or less degree, to every existing English dictionary can have no real authority, is too plain to need insisting upon with much particularity. As to dictionaries of the present day, that swell every few years by the thousand items, the presence of a word in one of them shows merely that its compiler has found that word in some dictionary older than his own, or in some not low and indecent publication of the day; the absence of

a word from any one of them showing merely that it has not been thus met with by the dictionarymaker. Its presence or its absence has this significance, and no more. Word-books thus compiled have the value which always pertains to large collections of things of one kind, even although the things may be intrinsically and individually of little worth; but the source of any authority in such word-collections it would be difficult to discover. Upon the proper spelling, pronunciation, etymology, and definition of words, a dictionary might be made to which high and almost absolute authority could justly be awarded. And the first and the second of these points are determined, with a very near approximation to such merit, in the works of Ogilvie, Latham, Richardson, Worcester, and that which is strangely enough called Webster's.

With one exception, Etymology is the least valuable element in the making of a dictionary, as it is of interest only to those who wish to study the history of language. It helps no man in his use of the word bishop to know that it comes from two Greek words, epi, meaning upon, and scopos, meaning a looker, still less to be told into what forms those words have passed in Spanish, Arabic, and Persian. Yet it is in their etymologies that our dictionaries have shown most improvement during the last twenty-five years; they having profited in this respect by the recent great advancement in the etymologica department of philology. The etymologies of words in our recently published dictionaries, although, as I have said before, they are of no great value for the purposes for which dictionaries are con

sulted, are little nests (sometimes slightly mare-ish) of curious and agreeable information, and afford a very pleasant and instructive pastime to those who have the opportunity and the inclination to look into them. But they are not worth, in a dictionary, all the labor that is spent on them, or all the room they occupy. The noteworthy spectacle has lately been shown of the casting over of the whole etymological freight of a well-known dictionary, and the taking on board of another. For the etymological part of the last edition of "Webster's American Dictionary," so called, Dr. Mahn, of Berlin, is responsible. When it was truly called Webster's Dictionary, it was in this respect discreditable to scholarship in this country, and even indicative of mental supineness in a people upon whom such a book could be imposed as having authority. And now that it is relieved of this blemish, it is, in this respect, neither Webster's Dictionary nor "American,” but Mahn's and German.

Dictionaries are consulted chiefly for their definitions; and yet, upon this point, all our English dictionaries are more or less misleading and confusing. And they are so in a great measure because the desire to multiply words has its counterpart in the desire to multiply definitions, in defiance of simple common sense. Minuteness of division and variety of signification have been sought, that the book might be big, and its definitions be styled copious. They have been marshalled one after the other in single file, that their array might be the more imposing; and to increase the impressiveness of the spectacle, they are solemnly numbered.