Pure Ignorance

Blunder of the Day:

Pastern in Johnson's Dictionary

(The first in a continuing, albeit intermittent, series of posts on instances of inattention, foolishness, and incompetence in reference books, leading to booboos, howlers, ghost-words, and screw-ups of every description.)

In his Dictionary of 1755, Samuel Johnson defined a pastern simply as “The knee of an horse.” But the pastern isn't the knee at all; it's actually the part of the foot between the fetlock and the hoof. At least he was forthright about it. “A lady once asked him how he came to define Pastern” that way. Boswell tells us that “Instead of making an elaborate defence, as she expected, he at once answered, ‘Ignorance, Madam, pure ignorance.’”