John Ash (divine)
{{Short description|English Baptist minister and dictionary author (18th c.)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=September 2014}}
{{Use British English|date=September 2014}}
John Ash (c. 1724–1779) was an English Baptist minister at Pershore, Worcestershire, and author of an English dictionary and grammar books.
Life
Ash was born in Dorset about 1724. He studied for the ministry at Bristol, under Bernard Foskett, became pastor at Loughwood Meeting House, a Baptist chapel near the village of Dalwood in Dorset, and while there contributed to periodicals. He settled in the ministry at Pershore in 1746, as the result of a compromise between different parties in the congregation.{{cite DNB|wstitle=Ash, John (1724?-1779)}}
He obtained a degree of LL.D. from a Scottish university in 1774, and died at Pershore in March or April 1779, aged 55.
Works
Ash is best known as a lexicographer, author of:
- [https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_the-new-and-complete-dic_ash-john_1795_1 New and Complete Dictionary of the English Language... To which is prefixed a comprehensive grammar. Vol I]; [https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_the-new-and-complete-dic_ash-john_1795_2/mode/2up Vol. II], 1775, 2nd edition 1795.
Ash's New and Complete Dictionary was noteworthy for the number of obsolete and provincial words contained in it. It incorporated most of Nathan Bailey's collection of canting words. This dictionary was the first to define in English the previously omitted words fuck and cunt.{{citation needed|date=August 2015}} His debt to Samuel Johnson was demonstrated in a famous error in his etymology of the word curmudgeon, which he says derives from the French for "unknown correspondent"; Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language from twenty years before had suggested (erroneously, as it happens) that the word derives from "cœur méchant" (malicious-hearted), attributing his information to an "unknown correspondent".{{citation needed|date=August 2015}} Ash's Dictionary is mentioned in Thomas Hardy's novel Far from the Madding Crowd.{{cite book|title=Far from the Madding Crowd|series=Leisure hour series |year=1874|location=New York|publisher=Henry Holt & Co|page=82|url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433074851126&view=1up&seq=104}}
An earlier work was:
- [https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_grammatical-institutes-_ash-john_1796_0 Grammatical Institutes].Grammatical Institutes; or, an Easy Introduction to Dr. Lowth's English Grammar: Designed for the Use of Schools, and to lead Young Gentlemen and Ladies into the Knowledge of the First Principles of the English Language. London, 1760.Grammatical Institutes; or, An Easy Introduction to Dr. Lowth's Grammar, 1785 ed. (facsimile ed., 1979, Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints, {{ISBN|978-0-8201-1339-5}}). It has been commented that "Ash understood much better than Lowth what it took to write a grammar for children."{{citation needed|date=August 2015}}
Other works:
- [https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_sentiments-on-education-_1777_1 Sentiments on Education, collected from the best writers; properly methodized, and interspersed with occasional observations. Vol. I]; [https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_sentiments-on-education-_1777_2 Vol. II], 1777
- [https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_the-perfecting-of-the-sa_ash-john_1778 The perfecting of the saints for the work of the ministry. A sermon, preached in Broad-Mead, Bristol, before the Bristol Education Society, August 12, 1778], 1778
- Dialogues of Eumenes.'
References
- {{Nuttall}}
- [http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~tsanchez/Ling10history.html Linguistic History notes]
- Notes about John Ash at Random House's [http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=20001129 Word of the Day]
- [http://members.tripod.com/~candst/est02.html Reference] to Ash's New and Complete Dictionary.
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20051107210529/http://prometheus.cc.emory.edu/cfm/academic/bib.html Bibliography] of Primary and Secondary Texts pertaining to the Study of English in Eighteenth-Century Great Britain (at Emory.edu)
- [http://www.lucl.leidenuniv.nl/index.php3?c=126 The codifiers and the English language: tracing the norms of Standard English]
- {{cite book|last=Micklethwait|first=David|title=Noah Webster and the American Dictionary|url=https://archive.org/details/noahwebsteramer00mick|url-access=registration|publisher=McFarland|location=Jefferson, NC|year=2000|page=[https://archive.org/details/noahwebsteramer00mick/page/49 49]|isbn=978-0-7864-2157-2 }}
Notes
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;Attribution
{{DNB|wstitle=Ash, John (1724?-1779)}}
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Category:18th-century English Baptist ministers
Category:English lexicographers
Category:Year of birth uncertain
Category:18th-century English non-fiction writers
Category:18th-century English male writers
Category:18th-century English writers