“This year marks the two hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the first publication of Samuel Johnson’s magnificent Dictionary of the English Language, the most ambitious and idiosyncratic single-person etymological effort ever attempted. Accolades have accumulated over its reigning period of influence. Unabashedly entertaining it is, indeed. The current generation of professional lexicographers is taught to dissect words in a vacuum, to trace their etymological history with Protestant precision. Doctor Johnson is their Columbus. He is also an anti-model.”