Dictionary Quotes

The great American dictionary maker Noah Webster was a renowned philanderer. One day Mrs Webster found the wordsman in bed with the chambermaid. “Noah, I am surprised,” huffed the offended wife. Thereupon Webster drew himself up righteously and informed her, “No madam, you are astonished. I am surprised.”

I’ve been in Who’s Who and I know what’s what, but this is the first time I’ve been in the dictionary. (On becoming a life jacket)

I look upon this as I did upon the Dictionary: it is all work, and my inducement to it is not love or desire of fame, but the want of money, which is the only motive to writing that I know of.(On the task of editing Shakespeare, which John Hawkins told Johnson should be intrinsically […]

I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything.

Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things they denote.

If a word in the dictionary were misspelled, how would we know?

Lexicographer: n.s. A writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words.

I misplaced my dictionary. Now I’m at a loss for words.

Its most important claim on our attentnion is that Johnson’s [dictionary] is the only English dictionary that can be called a great work of literature. Most reference books are interesting only as long as they’re current; Johnson remains fascinating long after his definitions have been superseded.

Sometimes you can’t look up the correct spelling of a word in the dictionary because you don’t know how to spell it.