17 Metaphors for dictionary

A dictionary in Johnson's sense was the highest kind of work to which a literary journeyman could be set, but it was still work for a journeyman, not for an artist.

But despite small blemishes, the dictionary was a marvellous piece of work to accomplish in eight and a half years; and it is quite certain that, if all the quotations had had to be verified and furnished with exact references, a much longer time, or the employment of much more collaboration, would have been required.

A dictionary, as Johnson conceived it, was in fact work for a "harmless drudge," the definition of a lexicographer given in the book itself.

It must however be mentioned that the second dictionary of English and another modern tongue was appropriately 'A Dictionary in Englyshe and Welshe, moche necessary to all suche Welshemen as wil spedlye learne the englyshe tongue, thought vnto the kynges maiestie very mete to be sette forth to the vse of his graces subiectes in Wales, ... by Wyllyam Salesbury.'

If you are a scholar, Murray's many-volumed New English Dictionary may be the publication for you; but if you are an ordinary person, you will probably content yourself with something less expensive and exhaustive.

His Pronouncing Dictionary was, for a long period, the best standard of orthoëpy, that our schools possessed.

For two days he fluttered the leaves of his dictionary and whispered hoarsely to himself, "Tit-tat-toe, my-first-go, three-jolly-nigger-boys-all-in-a-row," picking out word after word with unerring accuracy until the dictionary was a waste of punctures and three generations of H.B.'s had passed away.

Johnson himself committed many errors, some of which I shall hereafter expose; yet I cannot conceive that the following judgement of his works was penned without some bias of prejudice: "Johnson's merit ought not to be denied to him; but his dictionary is the most imperfect and faulty, and the least valuable of any[80] of his productions; and that share of merit which it possesses, makes it by so much the more hurtful.

The vast dictionary, in which German words are not only set down in their present meaning but followed throughout every stage of their etymology with their relations to their congeners in other tongues indefatigably traced out, is a marvel of erudition.

The dictionary should be the book of first and last and constant resort.

Moreover, in this caveat under section 5, "The Dictionary or Vocabulary," the very first sentence reads: "The dictionary is a complete vocabulary of words alphabetically arranged and regularly numbered, beginning with the letters of the alphabet."

But in other ways his dictionary was a great improvement.

A dictionary, as Johnson conceived it, was in fact work for a "harmless drudge," the definition of a lexicographer given in the book itself.

But a dictionary, Unavella, is the basis of all education.

A dictionary of that extremely venerable tongue is an ostrich's stomach, which can crack the hardest etymological nut.

But dictionaries, one and all, are dull deceivers.

For, the English Dictionary, like the English Constitution, is the creation of no one man, and of no one age; it is a growth that has slowly developed itself adown the ages.

17 Metaphors for  dictionary