Johnson's dictionary

[Fred Shapiro]

On Mon, 4 Apr 2005 RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:

> I think Fred is saying that modern lawyers consult Johnson rather than
> "Webster" because that is what the people who wrote the Constitution would have
> consulted, if anything.
>
> If so, modern lawyers are missing the point of a historical dictionary: they
> obviously ought to be consulting the OED, which takes Johnson into account,
> put looks at far more data than Johnson ever could have (even if he had been
> particularly interested in empirical evidence scientifically assembled an
> analyzed).

Yes.  And perhaps even more than the OED they should be consulting
Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

Fred Shapiro


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Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
Associate Librarian for Collections and     YALE DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS
  Access and Lecturer in Legal Research     Yale University Press,
Yale Law School                             forthcoming
e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu               http://quotationdictionary.com
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