A speeat o’ rain

In this month of showers, a spate — a heavy downpour in the Cleveland vernacular — situated somewhere in the vicinity of Great Broughton¹Atkinson, Rev. J. C. “A Glossary of the Cleveland Dialect” 1868. JOHN RUSSELL SMITH,SOHO SQUARE..

I don’t suppose that ‘spate‘ found its place amidst the 40,000 entries of Dr Samuel Johnson’s seminal dictionary, published on this very day in 1755. The laborious compilation consumed nearly a decade of his life, though he once boasted he could have completed it in a mere three years. His reward amounted to a princely sum of 1,500 guineas, a small fortune akin to £230,000 in modern currency.

In my mind’s eye, I will always see Johnson as similar to the portrayal by Robbie Coltrane in Blackadder the Third²Curtis, Richard, and Ben Elton. 1987. ‘Ink and Incapability’, IMDb <https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0526724/> [accessed 15 April 2024].

Seeking the patronage of Prince George for his magnum opus, Johnson encountered cynicism. The Prince, eager to bolster his standing as an intellectual, entertained the proposal, yet Blackadder, ever the skeptic, sought to dissuade him. Upon Johnson’s assertion that his lexicon contained ‘every word in our beloved language,’ Blackadder proffered his facetious ‘contrafibularities.’

Upon observing Johnson’s fear of an oversight of a word, Blackadder, with contrived remorse, expressed, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, sir. I’m anaspeptic, phrasmotic, even compunctuous to have caused you such pericombobulation.‘

• 1
  Atkinson, Rev. J. C. “A Glossary of the Cleveland Dialect” 1868. JOHN RUSSELL SMITH,SOHO SQUARE.
• 2
  Curtis, Richard, and Ben Elton. 1987. ‘Ink and Incapability’, IMDb <https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0526724/> [accessed 15 April 2024]