Johnson’s definition of network

In Jane Loudon’s The Mummy!: A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century (1827) — more on that soon — one of the running gags is that due to the success of “universal education,” all the lower-class people speak in learned Latinate phrases, while the average member of the upper class affects (I, 3)

an excessive plainness and simplicity in his language; so much so, indeed, as sometimes almost to degenerate into rudeness, in order that it might be clearly distinguished from the elaborate and scientific expressions of the vulgar.

So we get this exchange between the foreigner Hans and an English cottager (III, 6):

“I opine that you must be unreasonable to grumble, when you consider the delightful occasion it affords you of refreshing your olfactory nerves by partaking of a little of this odoriferous atmosphere.”

“My what nerves?” asked Hans.

“Your olfactory nerves,” replied the learned cottager, with a look of the greatest possible contempt: “that is, the nerves that line the membrane of the nasal organ. Every child knows that the nasal fossæ are formed to receive sensations, as by their depth and extent a larger surface is given to the pituitary membrane, and these soft sinuses, or cavities, are enabled to retain a greater mass of air loaded with odoriferous matter.”

Poor Hans stood aghast at this explanation, which he found something like that said to be given by Dr. Johnson, when he called net-work a complicated concatenation of rectangular angles.

Now, did Johnson (1709–1784) ever define “network” as “a complicated concatenation of rectangular angles”? Well, not in his famous Dictionary (1755): there he defined

Ne’tting. n. s. A reticulated piece of work.

Ne’twork. n. s. [net and work.] Any thing reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections.

Nor any skill’d in workmanship emboss’d;
Nor any skill’d in loops of fing’ring fine;
Might in their diverse cunning ever dare,
With this so curious network to compare.
Spenser.

A large cavity in the sinciput was filled with ribbons, lace, and embroidery, wrought together in a curious piece of network.
Addison’s Spectator.

Now, it’s true that this definition of “network” was seen as particularly ridiculous — probably even during Johnson’s lifetime, although I can’t find that anybody put it into print until three years after his death. Lord Monboddo, in On the Origin and Progress of Language (1787), II, 6, writes:

There is a definition of Network in Johnson’s dictionary, which has been shown me, and, I think, is a curiosity of the kind. “Nettwork,” says he, “is Any thing reticulated or decussated at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections.” This may not be a good definition of Network, but it is a very good description of the author; for nothing characterises a pedant more than the use of hard words, not intelligible except to a few, in describing a common thing.

James Boswell specifically mentions the definition of “network” (presumably subtweeting Monboddo) in his Life of Johnson (1791) thus:

His definition of Network has been often quoted with sportive malignity, as obscuring a thing in itself very plain.

Notice that Boswell doesn’t actually quote the definition! This seems to have created an audience who knew of Johnson’s definition but didn’t know what it was; inviting spurious definitions to arise. I don’t know if Loudon invented her version or is quoting it from someone else. We do find the same spurious definition quoted a half-century later in The Ladies’ Guide to Needle Work, Embroidery, Etc. (1877); I’m willing to bet that that author read it in The Mummy!

The method of teaching [netting] by explanation is not easy, nor would Dr. Johnson’s definition of it induce many young ladies to learn netting. He describes it as “a complicated concatenation of rectangular angles.” But I will endeavor to give a more simple explanation.

P.S. — The phrase “complicated concatenation” occurs surprisingly often in the corpus: “the complicated concatenation of secondary causes” (1787), “[Job’s] complicated concatenation of afflictions” (1817), even in a modern translation of Borges’ phrase “la intrincada concatenación de causas y efectos” (1949).