Page:The plan of a dictionary of the English language - Samuel Johnson (1747).djvu/35

 of little use among human beings, is often so much degraded from its original signification, that the academicians have inserted in their work the perfection of a language, and with a little more licentiousness might have prevailed on themselves to have added the perfection of a dictionary.

are many other characters of words which it will be of use to mention. Some have both an active and passive signification, as fearful, that which gives or which feels terror, a fearful prodigy, a fearful hare. Some have a personal, some a real meaning, as in opposition to old we use the adjective young of animated beings, and new of other things. Some are restrained to the sense of praise, and others to that of disapprobation, so commonly, though not always, we exhort to good actions, we instigate to ill; we animate, incite and encourage indifferently to good or bad. So we usually ascribe good, but impute evil; yet neither the use of these words, nor perhaps of any other in our licentious language, is so established as not to be often reversed by the correctest writers. I shall therefore, since the rules of stile, like those of law, arise from precedents often repeated, collect the testimonies on both sides, and endeavour to discover and promulgate the decrees of custom, who has so long possessed, whether by right or by usurpation, the sovereignty of words.

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