another to things;
one will express an ill, another a good, and a third a neutral sense;
one will prove the expression genuine from an ancient author;
another will show it elegant from a modern: a doubtful authority
is corroborated by another of more credit; an ambiguous sentence is
ascertained by a passage clear and determinate: the word, how
often soever repeated, appears with new associates and in different
combinations, and every quotation contributes something to the
stability or enlargement of the language.

When words are used equivocally I receive them in either sense; when
they are metaphorical, I adopt them in their primitive acceptation.

I have sometimes, though rarely, yielded to the temptation of
exhibiting a genealogy of sentiments, by showing how one author copied
the thoughts and diction of another: such quotations are indeed little
more than repetitions, which might justly be censured, did they not
gratify the mind, by affording a kind of intellectual history.

The various syntactical structures occurring in the examples have been
carefully noted; the license or negligence with which many words have
been hitherto used, has made our style capricious and indeterminate;
when the different combinations of the same word are exhibited
together, the preference is readily given to propriety, and I have
often endeavored to direct the choice.

Thus have I labored by settling the orthography, displaying the
analogy, regulating the structures, and ascertaining the
signification of English words, to perform all the parts of a faithful
lexicographer: but I have not always executed my own scheme, or
satisfied my own expectations. The work, whatever proofs of diligence
and attention it may exhibit, is yet capable of many improvements; the
orthography which I recommend is still controvertible, the etymology
which I adopt is uncertain, and perhaps frequently erroneous; the
explanations are sometimes too much contracted, and sometimes too much
diffused, the significations are distinguished rather with subtlety
than skill, and the attention is harassed with unnecessary minuteness.

The examples are too often injudiciously truncated, and perhaps
sometimes--I hope very rarely--alleged in a mistaken sense; for in
making this collection I trusted more to memory, than, in a state of
disquiet and embarrassment, memory can contain, and purposed to supply
at the review what was left incomplete in the first transcription.