Dictionary
From Encyclopædia
A dictionary is a list of words and phrases that is arranged alphabetically and gives the pronunciation, alternate spelling, and meaning of each entry. Many dictionaries also explain the origin of each word, state what part of
speech it is, and indicate how it is used idiomatically. More detailed dictionaries supply additional information, including the chronological development of each word, changes in its meaning, and examples of its use in different contexts. Bilingual and polyglot dictionaries include at least some of these details and add the equivalent foreign words. Encyclopedic dictionaries give additional information on substantive topics and include the names of people and places. There are also specialized dictionaries of many kinds, including dictionaries arranged by word roots; dictionaries of synonyms; dictionaries of special subject areas; dictionaries of dialect or jargon; and reverse indexes, in which words are arranged by their terminations.EARLY HISTORYEarly examples of dictionaries have survived from classical Greece, many being glossaries of difficult words in
Homer's poems. The first recognizable general dictionary was compiled by Marcus Verrius Flaccus about 20 BC; no copy survives, but part of Sextus Pompeius's Festus's abridgement (late 2d century AD) of his De verborum significatu (On the Meaning of Words) is extant and quotes extensively from the earlier work of Flaccus. Both the Greeks and the Romans were keenly interested in the origin and meaning of words. The advantages of alphabetical arrangement were well known to them, but it was rarely used in dictionaries until the 10th- or 11th-century encyclopedic dictionary of the Greek Suidas. In China the earliest dictionary, the Shuo Wen, was compiled about AD 100.LATER HISTORYA part of VINCENT OF BEAUVAIS's
encyclopedia, the Speculum maius (The Greater Mirror), first completed in 1244, was devoted to a glossary--a feature copied by
Pierre Bercheure in his Reductorium, repertorium et dictionarium morale utriusque testamenti (c.1340), the first work to use the word dictionary for this purpose. Merchants, scholars, exiles, translators, and travelers needed bilingual dictionaries. Some early printed examples are the Vocabolista italiano-tedesco (Italian-German Vocabulary, 1477) and the Vocabulary in French and English (c.1483) of
William CAXTON.Scholar-printers accelerated the development of dictionaries: the renowned Estienne family compiled and published some 20 Greek and Latin dictionaries during the 16th and 17th centuries. Between 1591 and 1612 the Italian academies made valuable contributions, and the Accademia della Crusca issued its Vocabolario (1612), the first of the great national dictionaries. This spurred Cardinal RICHELIEU to set up the ACADEMIE FRANCAISE in 1634, which produced the first edition of the French national dictionary in 1694. Most earlier dictionaries had been arranged by the roots of words, but the second edition (1718) of the Academie's dictionary was arranged alphabetically, and this system gradually grew in popularity.MODERN HISTORYBefore the 18th century, many types of words, such as
slang, technical terms, and dialectal words, were omitted from dictionaries. John Harris's Lexicon Technicum (1704) devoted considerable space to defining technical and scientific words. About the same time, polyglot dictionaries, sometimes covering seven or eight
languages, appeared; and missionaries began to compile dictionaries of Oriental
languages. The Spanish
academy's multivolume dictionary appeared in 1726-37; and the first British dictionary that could claim international reputation, the Dictionary of the
English language, was issued in 1755 by Samuel JOHNSON. Pronunciation was first given due emphasis in James Buchanan's Linguae Britannicae (1757).The work of
Noah WEBSTER, An American Dictionary of the
English language (1828), achieved immediate and lasting success in North
America and Britain. It was the first modern encyclopedic dictionary and quickly became the arbiter of correct spelling and pronunciation. In France,
Pierre LAROUSSE issued a series of important dictionaries, and Emile Littre compiled his Dictionnaire de la langue francaise (1873-78), which is notable for its etymologies and its examples of usage drawn from famous authors. The brothers Jacob and Wilhelm GRIMM compiled the Deutsches Worterbuch, the great German dictionary that was begun in 1854 and only completed in 1960. The work of Sir James MURRAY, A New English Dictionary (1888-1928) now known as The
Oxford English Dictionary (OED), gained universal fame by the example it set for compilation based on historical principles. In Murray's work, the history of every word and its changes in meaning are clearly demonstrated in chronological order. By this time,
interest in the history of
language had developed greatly: Frederic Eugene Godefroy issued his huge Dictionnaire de l'ancienne langue francaise (1881-1902); Eelco Verwijs and Jacob Verdam's Middelnederlandsch Woordenboek (1885-1912) was issued at The Hague; and Johan Fritzner's Ordbog over det gamle Norsk sprog (1886-96) appeared in
Norway.THE TWENTIETH CENTURYThe 20th century has proved the most productive and innovative period in the history of dictionaries. There are now dictionaries of
slang, of dialects, of individual periods in the history of a
language; dictionaries of comparative philology; and dictionaries of ancient and only recently deciphered
languages. A notable lexicographical event was the publication (1989) of the second edition of the
Oxford English Dictionary, only seven years after the project was begun. Both the speed with which it was prepared and the unique qualities of this work are the result of computerization. The printed version is the product of an electronic data base of nearly 60 million words. Available in electronic form as a CD-ROM, the dictionary can be queried to produce quantities of previously hidden information: from the
number of Shakespearean quotes in the dictionary (33,150) to a list of all those words coming into English from Armenian.Robert L. CollisonBibliography: Cassidy, Frederic G., Dictionary of American Regional English, vol. 1 (1985); Collison, Robert L., Dictionaries of English and Foreign
languages, 2d ed. (1971), and, as ed., A
bibliography of English Dictionaries (1990); McArthur, Tom,
worlds of Reference: Learning and
language from the Clay Tablet to the Computer (1988); Murray, K. M., Caught in the Web of Words: James A. H. Murray and the
Oxford English Dictionary (1977); Partridge, Eric, The Gentle Art of Lexicography (1963; repr. 1976); Well, Ronald A., Dictionaries and the Authoritarian Tradition (1973).
