He was director of the Prussian-founded Warsaw Lyceum during its existence (1804–31) and an important figure in the Polish Enlightenment.
Samuel Gottlieb Linde was born in Toruń, Crown of Poland, which 22 years later, after his birth, as a result of the Second Partition of Poland, became a city under the rule of the King of Prussia (Prussian Poland), to Jan Jacobsen Linde, a master locksmith and member of the city council who had immigrated from Sweden, and Anna Barbara, née Langenhann.
In 1795–1803 he was a librarian to Józef Maksymilian Ossoliński and began gathering material for his future dictionary for Polish and other Slavic grammar and expressions by traveling for six years through Galicia and to Moldova.
Their daughter Ludwika Emilia Izabela married Leopold Otto, a Lutheran pastor.
Linde's major work was Słownik języka polskiego [pl] (Dictionary of the Polish Language), a six-volume monolingual dictionary, of lasting importance for Slavic lexicography, published in Warsaw in 1807–14.