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Period: 1401 to
The First Period
A need for a dictionary or glossary has been felt in the cultural growth of many civilised peoples at a fairly early period. The history of dictionary-making for the English language goes as far back as the Old English period where its first traces are found in the form of glosses of religious books with interlinear translation from Latin. Bilingual English-Latin and English-French dictionaries were already in existence in the 15th - 16th centuries. -
1440
The Promptorium Parvulorum
'The Promptorium Parvulorum', compiled by an anonymous Dominican friar, registers about 12,000 English words with Latin equivalents; this is the first substantial dictionary with English lemmata.'The Promptorium', the name of which has now become a household word to students of the history of English, is a vocabulary containing some 10,000 words - substantives, adjectives, and verbs - with their Latin equivalents. -
1530
Lesclarcissement de la langue francoyse
John Palsgrave’s English–French 'Lesclarcissement de la langue francoyse' offers the first sophisticated bilingual dictionary of two living European languages. -
Worlde of Wordes
John Florio publishes his Italian–English 'Worlde of wordes', amply expanded in 1611 as 'Queen Annas New World of Words', with further renamed editions in the seventeenth century. One of the most prominent linguists and educators in Elizabethan England, Florio was greatly responsible for the spreading of Italian letters and culture throughout educated English society. -
Period: to
The Second Period
By the end of the sixteenth century there was a moving of the waters: the Renascence of ancient learning had itself brought into English use thousands of learned words, 'ink-horn terms,' as they were called by Bale and by Puttenham. A work exhibiting the spelling, and explaining the meaning, of these new-fangle 'hard words' was the felt want of the day; and the first attempt to supply it marks, on the whole, the most important point in the evolution of the modern English Dictionary. -
Table Alphabeticall
Robert Cawdrey published his 'Table Alphabeticall', registering 2,498 ‘hard words’: the first free-standing non-specialized monolingual dictionary of English. Subsequent editions appeared in 1609, 1613, and 1617 (3,264 entries).Cawdrey wanted the English language to be better organised and felt that 'The Table Alphabeticall' would help the reader to understand challenging words. -
English Expositor
John Bullokar’s 'English Expositor' was the first English dictionary of ‘hard’ words to include old words marked as such. The large majority of these entries came from Speght’s glossary of 1602. Bullokar added a small number of words that he had probably encountered in his own reading. His selection of old words is a haphazard one, but it influenced later English lexicographers, especially Cockeram. -
The New World of English Words
Phillips included a comparatively large number of old words in his 'The New World of English Words'. The principles behind his selection are difficult to detect; this is illustrated by the fact that he also included words which he marked as ‘Chaucerian’ (while many of his ‘old’ words were also from Chaucer) and by the fact that in later editions of his dictionary published during his lifetime (1662, 1671 and 1678) there is some inconsistency in the marking of old words. -
Period: to
The Third Period
The third period began in the 18th century. At that time
hard-word dictionaries began to be replaced by word books giving ever –increasing attention to literary usage.
Moreover, the publication of the first terminological and encyclopedic dictionaries of the English language started. The theory of lexicography did not exist at that time, and lexicographers relied on the experience of previous generations, introducing new approaches to the lexicographic development. -
The Lexicon Technicum
The Lexicon Technicum was the work of a London clergyman, John Harris (1666-1719). Its professed advantage over French dictionaries of the arts and sciences was that it contained explanation not only of the terms used in the arts and sciences, but also of the arts and sciences themselves.Like many early English encyclopedias, the pages are not numbered. -
Universal Etymological Dictionary of the English Language
The first book to embody the ideals of the age was Nathaniel Bailey’s Universal Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, originally published in 1721. This, one of the most revolutionary dictionaries ever to appear, was the first to pay proper attention to current usage, the first to feature etymology, the first to give illustrative quotations, the first to include illustrations, and the first to indicate pronunciation. It was the basis of Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of 1755. -
Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language
Johnson’s Dictionary enormously extends the techniques developed by Bailey. Johnson was able to revise Bailey’s crude etymologies, to make a systemic use of illustrative quotations, to fix the spelling of many disputed words, to develop a really discriminating system of definition, and to exhibit the vocabulary of English much more fully than had ever been attempted before. -
Period: to
The Fourth Period
The chief contributions of the 19th were unmistakably the recording of word history through dated quotations and the development on encyclopedic word books.
At the fourth stage of development of the English national lexicography, the dictionary of Johnson
was significantly revised, supplemented and edited by G. Todd, who published his lexicographical work in 1818. The microstructure of the dictionary has become universal for all explanatory dictionaries. -
An American Dictionary of the English Language
An American Dictionary of the English Language two-volume dictionary by the American lexicographer Noah Webster. It was based on the principle that word usage should evolve from the spoken language. That's why the work was attacked for its “Americanism,” or unconventional preferences in spelling and usage, as well as for its inclusion of non-literary words, especially technical terms in the arts and sciences. -
New Dictionary of English Language
It was only a question of time, therefore, before someone combined Johnson’s perception with the findings of the few science of historical linguistics. That person was Charles Richardson, who, in his New Dictionary of English Language (1836), produced a dictionary completely lacking definitions but one in which both the senses and the historical evolutions of the senses were accurately indicated by dated defining quotations. -
A Standard Dictionary of the English Language
A Standard Dictionary of the English Language espoused four policies pertinent to its initial and future publications: the ordering of definitions according to current; the appearance of etymologies at the end of definitions; the use of one alphabetical list for all entries,; the use of lowercase initial letters for all entry titles except proper nouns
