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Dictionaries as Cookbooks of Lexigraphic Taste: Comparing Bierce & Johnson, #1 “Art”

I’m making semi-daily posts comparing words defined by the great collectors of ideas, Ambrose Bierce and Samuel Johnson.  Bierce wrote a scathing, cynical book in which he defined things for his own needs, feeling like a firey, filling, sumptuous soup.  Johnson’s effort was a spectacular effort of a novelesque-dictionary–its almost a cookbook for the lexi-gourmand, the ultimate descriptions of savories by one of English’s great chefs. I thought it would be interesting to compare words that they defined in common.  Try it here.

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