Dictionaries of "Hard Words" and Semantic Drift in England XVII-XVIII Centuries

Changes in the semantics of words serve as a characteristic marker of mental transformations. The reason may be social, cultural, religious, ideological and other structural changes occurring in the area where the language exists. The revolutionary events of English social life in the mid-17th century suggest that characteristic transformations also occurred in the semantics of the language. The "complication" of the English language through translations of texts by Latin authors, the publication by travelers of the words of strangers, the spread of neologisms and "lexical innovations" due to the complication of the structure of scientific knowledge- all this required the codification and syntagmatization of the language. The article discusses the features of the first English dictionaries of "hard words". Using the example of a comparison of the dictionaries of H. Cockeram and the later dictionary of Samuel Johnson, the changes that occurred in the semantic content of words in England in the 17th century are demonstrated. It is concluded that in the middle of the 18th century, the desire of compilers of explanatory dictionaries to fix the final meaning of words ran into the variability of language and cultural norms. They have to admit the utopian nature of projects to create unified dictionaries that do not require further corrections.