[Ads-l] help wanted: information on a mid-18th C English dictionary

[Stephen Goranson]

Quite true, Bill.

Yet, the 1767 advertisement included:
“After the etymological part is finished, it is proposed to give
in the latter numbers an account of the lives the most eminent
men,…”
I posted because the 1780 Biographical Dictionary followed, with the same admittedly specifically vaguely-given authorship, with similar literary taste, with another London publisher a stone’s throw from the former one, who was perhaps not a successful bookseller (was selling a dictionary as a serial a poor choice?--both extant volumes are rare).
And because the request for help was a pitch to know more about these rather elusive gentlemen who included baseball.
My post may well have been exceedingly small potatoes. Perhaps not a balk?
SG





________________________________
From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Bill Mullins <amcombill at HOTMAIL.COM>
Sent: Monday, October 4, 2021 10:35 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Subject: Re: help wanted: information on a mid-18th C English dictionary

>  There are a few entries by "a Society of Gentlemen".  As these are at irregular intervals and in different places, I think that it was a means of staying anonymous.

Repeating what I said Friday, "A Society of Gentlemen" is a common way for patrons, publishers and sponsors of various books and magazines to describe themselves.  In Newspapers.com, one sees dozens/hundreds of publications issued this way from the 18th century to the present.  It might as well mean "a bunch of dudes".

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