Any of a wide variety of lexicographical works, generally arranged alphabetically (or by the structural features of characters, in the case of logographical languages), and purporting to offer useful information about words—paradigmatically their meaning and usage, though also often their history, pronunciation, equivalents in other languages, etc. While word lists of various sorts can be found in many ancient literate traditions, the emergence of the dictionary as such correlates with the codification of national languages across the early modern period. Samuel Johnson, whose Dictionary of the English Language (1755) significantly shaped the language in which it was written, snuck a charmingly self-deprecating note into his magnum opus, describing the maker of a dictionaries as a “harmless drudge” immersed in quietly bookish labor. His rough contemporary Voltaire, however, composed a Dictionnaire philosophique (1764) that was intended as a cudgel for the descending of the Ancien Régime—and deployed to that end.