Dictionary

Johnsonese en · PROPN

Etymology

From Johnson + -ese.

Meanings

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 1843, Thomas Babington Macaulay, “Madame D'Arblay”, in Edinburgh Review:

Hypernyms

inkhornism