Johnsonese
name
name ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
Proper Noun
- 1 The literary style of Dr. Samuel Johnson; an inflated, stilted, or pompous style, affecting classical words.
"It is a sort of broken Johnsonese, a barbarous patois, bearing the same relation to the language of Rasselas which the gibberish of the negroes of Jamaica bears to the English of the House of Lords"
Example
More examples"It is a sort of broken Johnsonese, a barbarous patois, bearing the same relation to the language of Rasselas which the gibberish of the negroes of Jamaica bears to the English of the House of Lords"
Etymology
From Johnson + -ese.
More for "johnsonese"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.