Wordsmiths celelebrate 300 years since the birth of Dr Samuel Johnson

Posted by Dorothea Stuart

All wordsmiths, Toastmasters included, are celebrating the 300th anniversary of the birth of Dr Samuel Johnson - this week. Read a good article "The book that influenced all others" on BBC News.  Listen again to an In Our Time show on the life of Johnson.  It's a facinating account both of his life, the development of his dictionary, and literary London.

"To illustrate the meanings of words, Johnson supplied 114,000 quotations from books…it made his dictionary into a superior prototype of the internet." John Carey.

As Johnson was from Lichfield the local BBC radio has plenty going on including reminding us of some great words in Johnson's dictionary. How about...dandiprat and fopdoodle? They have a rather nice ring to them. Perhaps a Grammarian could get them back into circulation.