Nell’s Reviews > Samuel Johnson's Dictionary : Selections from the 1755 Work That Defined the English Language > Status Update

abracadabra: "A superstitious charm against agues."

Lots of insults, some embellished with a passage of Shakespeare.

-abbey-lubber (pious sloth)
-acephalous (no head to speak of)
-answer-jobber (not really an insult, but it disgusts Swift)
-asshead (see Hamlet)

There's also plenty of passages from Milton/Dante, etc. And some examples of near-malpractice early medicine.

Richard Mulcaster, in a 1582 predecessor to Johnson's dictionary: "It were a thinge verie praiseworthie in my opinion if som one well learned and as laborious a man, wold gather all the words which we use in our English tung...into one dictionarie...The want thereof, is the onelie cause why, that verie manie men, being excellentlie well learned in foren speche, can hardlie discern what theie have at home."