The Professor and the Madman

by Simon Winchester

For while we might laugh at the quaint charm of his definition of elephant, or of oats (“a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people”), or lexicographer (“a writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words”), we can only be staggered by his dealing with, say, the verb take. Johnson listed, with supportive quotations, no fewer than 113 senses of this particular verb’s transitive form and 21 of the intransitive. “To seize, grasp or capture; to catch with a hook; to catch someone in an error; to win popular favor; to be effective; to claim to do something; to assume the right…to mount a horse, to flee, to perform what one does in removing one’s clothing….”