Lexicograhy

I must go to Lichfield at least once a month and have never been into Samuel Johnson’s birthplace. Rectified that today. Blip is of the case with an original copy of his 2 volume dictionary which contained 42,773 words. The current Oxford dictionary contains 273,000 words of which 171,476 are in current use. I enjoyed looking through a facsimile of Johnson’s work, lots of words that we don’t use any more (or I’d never heard of at least). Interesting how language is constantly evolving.