Samuel Johnson

I . . . hope that between public business, improving studies, and domestic pleasures, neither melancholy nor caprice will find any place for entrance.

Celerity

Time, with all its celerity, moves slowly to him whose whole employment is to watch its flight.

Characteristic

The characteristics of a true critic.

Characterize

Under the name of Tamerlane he intended to characterize King William.

Circumscription

The circumscriptions of terrestrial nature.

Comeliness

Comeliness signifies something less forcible than beauty, less elegant than grace, and less light than prettiness.

Comminution

Natural and necessary comminution of our lives.

Commodiousness

The commodiousness of the harbor.

Constitute

Truth and reason constitute that intellectual gold that defies destruction.

Contemper

The antidotes . . . have allayed its bitterness and contempered its malignancy.

Contravene

Laws that place the subjects in such a state contravene the first principles of the compact of authority.

Controversy

A dispute is commonly oral, and a controversy in writing.

Copulation

Wit, you know, is the unexpected copulation of ideas.

Counteraction

[They] do not . . . overcome the counteraction of a false principle or of stubborn partiality.

Cynic

I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to confess obligations where no benefit has been received.

Dawdle

Come some evening and dawdle over a dish of tea with me.

Deduction

The deduction of one language from another.

Demy

He was elected into Magdalen College as a demy; a term by which that society denominates those elsewhere called “scholars,” young men who partake of the founder's benefaction, and succeed in their order to vacant fellowships.

Devolve

His estate . . . devolved to Lord Somerville.

Dictionary

I applied myself to the perusal of our writers; and noting whatever might be of use to ascertain or illustrate any word or phrase, accumulated in time the materials of a dictionary.

Discriminative

That peculiar and discriminative form of life.

Disgrace

His ignorance disgraced him.

Dislike

Every nation dislikes an impost.

Dispense

He appeared to think himself born to be supported by others, and dispensed from all necessity of providing for himself.

Dissipated

A life irregular and dissipated.

Elegance

The endearing elegance of female friendship.

Expository

A glossary or expository index to the poetical writers.

Felicity

Our own felicity we make or find.

Figurable

Lead is figurable, but water is not.

Gorge

The fish has gorged the hook.

Harlequin

As dumb harlequin is exhibited in our theaters.

Idea

That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that is a wrong one.

Imposture

From new legends And fill the world with follies and impostures.

Impracticably

Morality not impracticably rigid.

Impropriety

But every language has likewise its improprieties and absurdities.

Inert

Doomed to lose four months in inactive obscurity.

Inquisitiveness

Mr. Boswell, whose inquisitiveness is seconded by great activity, scrambled in at a high window.

Insanity

All power of fancy over reason is a degree of insanity.

Insular

The penury of insular conversation.

Intention

Hell is paved with good intentions.

Intimidate

Now guilt, once harbored in the conscious breast, Intimidates the brave, degrades the great.

Intumescence

The intumescence of nations.

Jargon

The jargon which serves the traffickers.

Joy

Glides the smooth current of domestic joy.

Labefaction

There is in it such a labefaction of all principles as may be injurious to morality.

Lexicographer

Every other author may aspire to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach; and even this negative recompense has been yet granted to very few.

Licentiate

The college of physicians, in July, 1687, published an edict, requiring all the fellows, candidates, and licentiates, to give gratuitous advice to the neighboring poor.