This introduces another respect in which Johnson is supposed to have been innovative and departed from previous practice. It is widely recognised that Johnson's theory of language that he put forward in the Plan (1747) had to be at best modified and in some respects abandoned when it came to actually dealing with the amorphous, unwieldy, constantly changing nature of the living language. His scheme to organise the senses in each entry according to the plan outlined above had to be jettisoned when faced with some words for which it would not have been appropriate. Take the word 'controversy' for example. The order of the senses is as follows:

1. Dispute; debate; agitation of contrary opinions; a dispute is commonly oral, and a controversy in writing.
2. A suit in law.
3. A quarrel.
4. Opposition; enmity. This is an unusual sense.

The last might be considered as figurative, but it is hard to see how the order of the other senses follows the plan laid out by Johnson.

One of the respects in which Johnson abandoned his scheme is that faced with actual words in all their slipperiness of usage he could not adhere to his intention of anchoring the meanings of words in their etymologies and had, in the end, to bow to usage as the ultimate criterion of meaning. In some entries he clings to the idea that he can somehow give primacy to the root meaning, such as this under 'silly':

1. Harmless; innocent; inoffensive; plain; artless.
2. Weak; helpless.
3. Foolish; witless.

Significantly, he has no quotations for the first two senses other than one in archaic language from Spenser, and all his citations illustrate the last meaning. But elsewhere Johnson is careful to show how the word was actually used rather than merely to represent its literal root meaning. So, for example, under 'adieu':

The form of parting, originally importing a commendation to the Divine care, but now used, in a popular sense, sometimes to things inanimate; farewell.

However, that tension between a desire to 'correct' the language by returning each word to its etymological roots and a recognition that established usage had so far removed some words from their roots and returning them was impossible is visible in the earliest dictionaries, particularly in the law dictionaries mentioned earlier.