Scout wrote:
> "Magus" <Nope@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
> news:wZzKi.104496$jH3.75266@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> Scout wrote:
>>> "Leif" <leifrakur2@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
>> <snip>
>>> You ability to misconstrue and misrepresent something has already been
>>> established. If the meaning you claim is valid then surely it would be
in
>>> an authoritative source such as Webster's, American Heritage, or even
>>> Oxford. Heck, they even include archaic and obsolete meanings. So if
the
>>> meaning you suggest is valid you should be able to find it somewhere.
I
>>> may even take a run down to the library later and see if I can supply
you
>>> with a few more listings for the meaning of people from other and
older
>>> sources.
>>>
>>>
>> Johnson and Walker's Dictionary of the English Language
>> Second Edition, Revised and Corrected
>> MDCCCXXVIII (1828)
>>
>> PEOPLE, A nation; those who compose a community; the vulgar; the
>> commonalty; not the princes or nobles; persons of a particular class;
men
>> or persons in general.
>>
>> To PEOPLE, To stock with inhabitants.
>
> Nice one and very close to the time period in question. Yet, somehow I
> suspect that Leif will once again assert that the Founding Fathers were
> illiterate boobs who didn't know the meanings of the words they used.
Sort
> of like Leif himself is.
>
>
The definitions, for those words, are identical in Dr. Johnson's earlier
"A dictionary of the English language: in which the words are deduced
from their originals, and illustrated in their different significations
by examples from the best writers." London : Printed by W. Strahan, 1755.
Dr. Johnson's 1755 dictionary is the earliest English dictionary I
currently have access to.
According to Henry Hitchings in "Defining the World: The Extraordinary
Story of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary(Farrar,Straus, & Giroux, NY, 2005)"
Dr. Johnson's dictionary was the first to comprehensively do***ent the
English lexicon. Earlier dictionaries tended to be poorly organized,
poorly researched, and nothing more than glossaries of "hard words";
words that were technical, foreign, obscure, antiquated, etc.
So, I'd hazard to guess that Dr. Johnson's dictionary along with Noah
Webster's 1828 American Dictionary are the best references to use when
determining the meaning of words during the Founding ear.
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