During the period from 1660 through 1800, Great Britain became the world's leader. Language itself became submitted to rules during this period. This need to fix the English language is best illustrated (描述) in the making of The Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson. Guides to the English language had been in existence before Johnson began his project in 1746. These, however, were often little more than lists of hard words. When definitions of common words were supplied, they were often unhelpful. For example, a "horse" was defined in an early dictionary as "a beast well known".
Johnson changed all that, but the task was not an easy one. Renting a house at 17 Gough Square, Johnson began working in the worst of conditions. Supported only by his publisher, Johnson worked on the Dictionary with five assistants. Compared to the French Academy's dictionary, which took forty workers fifty-five years to complete (1639-1694), Johnson's dictionary was completed by very few people very quickly.
Balanced on a chair with only three legs, Johnson sat against a wall in a room filled with books. Johnson would read widely from these books, mark passages illustrating the use of a particular word, and give the books to his assistants so that they could copy the passages on slips of paper. These slips were then stuck to eighty large notebooks under the key words that Johnson had selected. Fixing the word by this method, Johnson could record a word，s usage and its definition.
How many passages were used? According to Johnson's modern biographer Walter Jackson Bate, the original total number could have been over 240,000. How many words were defined by the lexicographer? Over 40,000 words appeared in two large books in April of 1755. Did Johnson fully understand the huge task he was undertaking when he began? As he told his contemporary biographer James Boswell, "I knew very well what I was undertaking and very well how to do it — and have done it very well."
