one of the great landmarks in the history of dictionaries was the publication in 1755 of A Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson. He built on the work of Bailey and illustrated the use of words by including about 100,000 quotations from well-known authors from the 16th century on wards. Perhaps his most famous definition is that of 'oats': "A grain, which in England is generally given to horse, but in Scotland supports the people.
in American, in 1828, Noah Webster published An American Dictionary of the English Language. Its two volumes consisted of about 70,000 words and included American pronunciation and spelling, for example color for colour and center for centre.
Probably the most important development in the history of dictionaries was the production of the Oxford English Dictionary. Dr James Murray started to edit the enormous work in 1879 and the first part was published in 1884: A-ANT in 352 pages! It took another 44 years to complete the dictionary in 125 part. The final work was published in 1928 in 12 volumes covering 15,487 pages which included nearly 500,000 words