-
2300 BCE
The Earliest Known 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. -
700
The Historical Roots of British Lexicography
The historical roots of British lexicography go back to 7th-8th centuries when
Latin was a means of international communication in Europe and the most important
texts, first and foremost biblical ones, were written in this language. -
1300
The Problem of Ancient Dictionaries
By that time
(14th c.) it became clear that glossaries could not satisfy the growing reference needs of
their users. -
1400
"Medulla Gramatice"
"Medulla Gramatice"
— the first Latin-English dictionary which appeared in the 15th century. -
1538
Derivational Affixes Were Singled Out
-
1550
The Latin Language Lost It`s International Status
By the middle of the century Latin began to lose its status of
an international language and English lexicographers turned to new West-European
languages. -
1573
The Most Well-Known Bilingual and Polylingual Dictionaries of This Period
"Alvearic or Tripple Dictionarie, English, Latin, French" by J. Baret -
The Most Well-Known Bilingual and Polylingual Dictionaries of This Period
"A Dictionarie French and English" by Claudius
Hollyband -
The Most Well-Known Bilingual and Polylingual Dictionaries of This Period
"A World of Words, or Most copious, and exact Dictionarie in Italian and
English" by John Florio -
The First Monolingual Dictionary of English
The first monolingual dictionary of English "A Table Alphabetical, containing and
teaching the true writing, and understanding of hard English words, borrowed from
Hebrew, Greek, Latin or French, etc." by Robert Cawdrey -
Dictionaries of Hard Words Gradually Became Fairly Sophisticated Reference Book
"Glossagraphia: or a Dictionary, Interpreting all such Hard Words
whether Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, Teutonik, Belgich, British or
Saxon; as are now used in our refined English Tongue. Also the Terms of Divinity, Law,
Physics, Mathematics... with Etymologies, Definitions, and Historical Observations on the
same" by Thomas Blount -
The first attempt at a dictionary whose word-list comprised words of different degrees of complexity
Nathaniel Bailey who in
1721 published "An Universal Etymological English Dictionary". Two editions of this
dictionary (1721 and 1727) served the basis for his famous "Dictionarium Britanicum"
(London, 1730) which had 48,000 entries. Nathaniel Bailey made a few lexicographic
innovations: he was the first to indicate the stressed syllable in head-words and to use
sayings and proverbs in order to make the senses more explicit. -
Samuel Johnson`s Dictionaries
"A Dictionary of the English Language in Which the Words are Deduced from Their
Originals and Illustrated in Their General Significations by Examples from the Best
Writers" (London, 1775) had two parts. The first part consisted of "Preface", "The history
of the English language» and «The grammar of the English language", the second part was
the dictionary corpus, comprising 40,000 entries. -
The History of "Oxford English Dictionary"
The OED is the most comprehensive and authoritative dictionary of the English
language. It was compiled by the English Philological Society. The work began in 1857 -
The History of "Oxford English Dictionary"
The first volume of OED was published -
The History of "Oxford English Dictionary"
The last volume was published in 1928, and a Supplement — in 1933. -
New Method English Dictionary
The first monolingual dictionary of English for foreign learners was compiled by
M.West and J.G.Endicott. The dictionary had about 30,000 entries. The compilers made a successful attempt
to define these words with the help of a vocabulary consisting of only 1,490 words. -
Idiomatic and Syntactic English Dictionary
In 1942 in Japan A.S.Homby, E.V.Gatenby and H.Wakefield published the "Idiomatic
and Syntactic English Dictionary" (Tokyo: Kaitakusha) which was later retitled "Oxford
Advanced Learner`s Dictionary of Current English" (OALD) and became the most
authoritative reference book for foreign learners of English all over the world. -
"Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English"
Until 1978 the OALD was the only learner`s dictionary of English. Then the
"Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English" (LDCE) appeared. -
"Collins COBUILD English Language Dictionary"
And in the late
1980s one more learner`s dictionary was published — the "Collins COBUILD English
Language Dictionary" (COBUILD). -
The History of "Oxford English Dictionary"
The second edition of the OED which recorded the language of the 20th century was
published in 1989. Now the OED consists of twenty volumes and the number of entries
amounts to more than 325,000. -
"Lexicographic Year" 1995
Three
new editions of English learner`s dictionaries (OALD 5, LDCE 3 and COBUILD 2)
and two new dictionaries — "Cambridge International Dictionary of English" (CIDE)
and "Harrap` Essential English Dictionary" (HEED) came out almost simultaneously.