Definitions
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- proper noun The
literary style of Dr. Samuel Johnson; aninflated ,stilted , orpompous style, affectingclassical words.
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word Johnsonese.
Examples
-
Johnson's writings numerous passages written in that essentially vicious style to which the name Johnsonese has been cruelly given; but the searcher could not fail to find many passages guiltless of this charge.
-
"Johnsonese" Mr. Burke calls it ” doing himself less justice than anyone without an acute sense of irony could possibly conceive.
-
Poems (after Poe, as a matter of course), political diatribes in Johnsonese periods in _De Bow's
-
_Andy-Johnsonese_ into constitutional phrase, to give these versions some show of logical arrangement, and to carry out, as best they may, their own objects, while professing boundless devotion to his.
-
In place of the old loose-footedness there is set up a preciosity which, in one direction, takes the form of unyielding affectations in the spoken language, and in another form shows itself in the heavy Johnsonese of current English writingthe Jargon denounced by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch in his Cambridge lectures.
Chapter 1. Introductory. 5. The General Character of American English
-
And lucidity is just what modern Johnsonese lacks.
-
Only sophomores, and private secretaries who write speeches for able Congressmen, write Johnsonese.
-
Yet the fact is, Boswell ruined the literary reputation of Johnson by intimating that Johnson wrote Johnsonese; but that is a mistake.
-
The literary style of Mary Wollstonecraft's book is Johnsonese, but its thought forms the base of all that has come after.
-
The literary style of Rubens was Johnsonese all his life, and he made his meaning plain only by repetitions and many rhetorical flounderings.
Comments
Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.