Tax Day and A Dictionary

Today is April 15—Tax Day or T-Day!  April 15 has always been Tax Day as far back I can remember.  In fact, April 15 became Tax Day back in 1955 when I was 12-years-old!  I can understand a one-day delay since today is Sunday—but why two days?  Why is Tax Day April 17 instead of April 16?   Is it because of the new changes in the tax law?  Founding Father Benjamin Franklin famously said that the only things certain in this world were death and taxes and I just assumed April 15 was just as certain as the taxes.  April 17 is Tax Day because today is Sunday and tomorrow, Monday, April 16, is Emancipation Day in Washington DC.  The Compensated Emancipation Act freed thousands of slaves in the District of Columbia when Abraham Lincoln signed it on April 16, 1862.  Tax Day this year is April 17!

On April 15, 1755, A Dictionary of the English Language, written by Samuel Johnson, was published.  It is considered the most influential dictionary in the history of the English language and remained so for nearly 173 years until the publication of the Oxford English Dictionary.  Johnson’s dictionary contained 42,773 words.  The Second Edition the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary contains 171,476 contemporary words, and 47,156 obsolete words.   

Johnson’s Dictionary was somewhat unique.  To illustrate the meaning of each word, Johnson used literary quotations (nearly 114,000 of them).  His choice of authors for these quotations included the great ones like Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, and Swift.  Johnson’s use of quotations to define words, prompted me many years ago to use quotations to undergird and to define my own thoughts and writing.  One example of Johnson’s use of quotation is seen in his definition of the word “Opulence:  Wealth; riches; affluence.” Then this quote from Jonathan Swift: 

“There in full opulence a banker dwelt,

Who all the joys and pangs of riches felt;

His sideboard glitter’d with imagined plate,

And his proud fancy held a vast estate.”

Johnson also used humor and his own prejudices in many of his word definitions as in “Oats:  a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.”  Or as in “Lexicographer:  a writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge that busies himself in tracing the original and detailing the signification of words.”  

It would be deeply frustrating to live in a world without words.