Dictionary

I

Introduction

Dictionary, listing of the words of a language, usually in alphabetical order but sometimes also by topic, with their meanings or their equivalents. A dictionary may also contain pronunciations, syllabications, etymologies (word histories), and examples of usage. The term dictionary is also applied to any systematic list of special terms such as abbreviations, slang, or etymology, or to a list in which the special terms of a particular subject are defined. Some dictionaries focus on particular subjects, such as science, biography, geography, mathematics, history (see History and Historiography), or philosophy (see Philosophy, Western).

Some dictionaries are called encyclopedic (see Encyclopedia), because they not only define words but also offer additional descriptive and explanatory information and identify many biographical and geographical names. A famous encyclopedic dictionary is the French 19th-century dictionary-encyclopedia the Grand dictionnaire universel (17 volumes, 1865-1890), compiled by Pierre Athanase Larousse. The greatest such American work is the Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia (revised edition, 12 volumes, 1911), edited by American linguist William Dwight Whitney.

II

Earliest Dictionaries

The earliest known dictionaries were kept in the Mesopotamian city of Elba (now part of Syria). These clay tablets inscribed in columns of cuneiform writing date from about the 2300s bc and consist of words in the Sumerian language and their equivalents in the Akkadian language. Other early dictionaries, most written after the 5th century ad, include lists of Sanskrit terms from botany, medicine, and astronomy (see Sanskrit Language) and multilingual listings in Sanskrit, Tibetan, Mongolian, and Chinese. Probably the first to gather the entire Arabic vocabulary into one work was Arab scholar Khalil ibn Ahmad of Oman in the 8th century. Stimulated by continuing study of Arabic, the compilation of Hebrew dictionaries was underway by the 10th century. Some scholars place the beginnings of Hebrew lexicography (creation of dictionaries) between the 6th and 8th centuries.

The Greeks and Romans did not attempt a work containing all the words of their own or any foreign language; their early dictionaries were merely lists of unusual words or phrases. The scholar Apollonius Sophista assembled the first Greek lexicon, a collection of terms used by Homer, during the 1st century ad. One of the earliest works in Latin lexicography, by Verrius Flaccus, is De Verborum Significatu (The Meaning of Words), compiled during the 1st century ad. This work, in which the words are arranged alphabetically, has furnished a great deal of information on antiquities and Latin grammar.

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III

Standard European Dictionaries

The earliest polyglot (multilingual) dictionary of modern languages, the work of Italian monk Ambrogio Calepino, appeared in 1502. Originally compiled as a Latin-Greek lexicon, it grew to include Italian, French, and Spanish; the 1590 Basel edition included 11 languages. Among the first major dictionaries to be written entirely in modern languages, rather than in Latin, were the Italian Vocabulario degli Accademici della Crusca (1612) and the Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française (1694). Later came the Diccionario de la lengua española, published from 1726 to 1736 by the Royal Academy of Madrid.

Both the French and Spanish academies continue to publish dictionaries today. In Spain, the Diccionario de la lengua española, its 21st edition published in 1995 by Espasa-Calpe, remains the standard Spanish dictionary. In France work is underway on the 9th edition of the Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française. The first part, covering the entries from A to Enz, was published in 1994; regular supplements appear in the government publication Le journal officiel. The previous (8th) edition appeared from 1931 to 1935. Other widely respected dictionaries in French include Le grand Larousse de la langue française (7 volumes, 1971-1978) and the 9-volume Le grand Robert de la langue française (latest edition, 1994). The standard modern Italian dictionary is the Grande dizionario della lingua italiana (1961- ), of which 19 volumes (up to Squ) were completed by the year 2000.

The standard wordbook for German is the Deutsches Wörterbuch (16 volumes, 1854-1960; revised edition begun 1965), undertaken by philologists (language scholars) Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm (see Grimm Brothers). The 10-volume Duden—das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache (3rd edition, 1999) provides the most up-to-date coverage of modern German. Standard dictionaries for Russian are the 4-volume Slovar' russkogo iazyka (2nd edition, 1981) and the more recent Bol’shoi tolkovyi slovar’ russkogo iazyka (1998).

Beyond these scholarly works, compiled on historical principles, are the numerous bilingual dictionaries, which vary in reliability. They are designed for the person learning a language and thus generally present only word equivalents, not derivations or pronunciation.

IV

Dictionaries in Britain

Dominican monk Galfridus Grammaticus, also known as Geoffrey the Grammarian, compiled the Promptorium Parvulorum Sive Clericorum (Storehouse for Children or Clerics) in 1440 in Norfolk, England. Printed in 1449 by Wynkyn de Worde, it has a good claim to be the first English dictionary. It contains Latin equivalents for 10,000 English words and remained a leading wordbook for several generations. Another English-Latin dictionary, the Bibliotheca of Sir Thomas Elyot, followed in 1538. Robert Cawdrey, in A Table Alphabeticall … of Hard Usuall Wordes (1604), produced the first dictionary giving definitions of English words in English. The word dictionary was first used by Henry Cockeram in The English Dictionarie (1623). In 1656 Thomas Blount issued his Glossographia, also entirely in English, with “…hard words together with Divinity Terms, Law, Physick, Mathematicks and other Arts and Sciences explicated.”

These early works characteristically confined themselves to “hard words” and phrases not generally understood, because the daily vocabulary of the language was not expected to require definitions. New English Dictionary (1702), by John Kersey, departed from the hard-word tradition, including ordinary English words as well as unfamiliar terms. Another early comprehensive inventory of English was the Universal Etymological English Dictionary (1721) by Nathan Bailey, reissued in 1730 as the Dictionarium Brittanicum: A More Compleat Universal Etymological Dictionary Than Any Extant. This work used quotations from literary works to confirm and supplement definitions. A Dictionary of the English Language (1755), by essayist and literary critic Samuel Johnson, further extended the use of quotations. Johnson's two-volume dictionary remained the model of English lexicography for more than a century.

A dictionary with a guide to pronunciation, Linguae Britannicae (1757), was compiled by British publisher James Buchanan. Irish actor Thomas Sheridan published a General Dictionary of the English Language (1780) with the object of establishing a permanent standard of pronunciation. The most influential of the dictionaries describing pronunciation was the Critical Pronouncing Dictionary and Expositor of the English Language (1791) by another actor, John Walker.

A culmination of lexicographic work in the English language came with A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (NED), popularly known as The Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Work on this most comprehensive of dictionaries began with the support of the English Philological Society in 1857. Scottish lexicographer Sir James Augustus Henry Murray became editor in 1879. Ten volumes appeared between 1884 and 1928, and a 12-volume edition with a single-volume supplement in 1933. A 4-volume supplement came out between 1972 and 1986, and the 20-volume second edition was published in 1989.

Various other dictionaries are related to the OED in content or method. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, a 2-volume abridgement with some revisions in pronunciation, was issued in 1933 and later revised twice. Its success led to publication of the New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary in 1993. A 1-volume work, the New Oxford Dictionary of English, joined this family in 1998, while the Concise Oxford Dictionary of English dates to 1911, with a recent edition in 1999.

The Oxford dictionaries have made good use of technological advances and exist in several forms. The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, a 2-volume photographically reduced version of the 13-volume set, became available in 1971. In 1987 The Oxford English Dictionary on CD-ROM was published (see CD-ROM). The second edition of the CD-ROM version was issued in 1992. With the release of the OED on the Internet in 2000, subscribers gained access not only to the 1989 version but also to the work of editors revising it, an effort expected to reach completion in 2010.

Scottish lexicographer Sir William A. Craigie, who had collaborated on the editing of the first edition of the OED, began a companion work in 1936. A Dictionary of American English on Historical Principles was completed in four volumes in 1944. A one-volume Oxford American Dictionary appeared in 1980 and exists in a 1999 edition.

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