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Period: 1401 to
The First Period
Early in the Anglo-Saxon period we find glosses containing native English equivalents for the hard Latin terms and it may be that two of these—the Leiden and Erfurt Glosses- represent the earliest written English we posses. Such glosses, whether Latin-Latin or Latin-English, continued to be compiled during the entire Anglo-Saxon and most of the Middle-English period. -
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. -
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. -
1567
Vocabularium saxonicum
Laurence Nowell’s Vocabularium saxonicum initiates the lexicography of Old English; unpublished until the twentieth century, it stands at the head of a tradition leading through William Somner’s Dictionarium saxonico–latino–anglicum (1659) to Joseph Bosworth’s Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. -
World of Words
Next to French, the continental languages most important to Englishmen in the sixteenth century, were Italian and Spanish, of both of which, accordingly, dictionaries were published before the end of the century. In 1599 'resolute John Florio' brought out his Italian-English Dictionary, the World of Words, which he re-published in a much enlarged form in 1611, with dedication to the Queen of James I, as Queen Anna's New World of Words. -
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 publishes his Table Alphabeticall, registering 2,498 ‘hard words’: the first free-standing non-specialized monolingual dictionary of English. Other small hard-word dictionaries more or less indebted to Cawdrey’s would be widespread in England throughout the seventeenth century. -
An English Expositor
In 1616, Dr. John Bullokar, then resident in Chichester, followed with a work of the same kind and size, named by him An English Expositor, of which numerous editions came out, one as late as 1684. -
The English Dictionarie
In 1623 appeared the work which first assumed the title of 'The English Dictionary,' by Gent. H. C., we learn from the dedication, was Henry Cockeram. -
Glossographia
Thomas Blount, Barrister of the Inner Temple, and correspondent of Anthony à Wood, was devoting the leisure hours of twenty years to his 'Glossographia: or a Dictionary interpreting all such hard words, whether Hebrew, Greek, Latin,' etc., 'as are now used in our refined English Tongue,' of which the first edition saw the light in 1656. -
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. -
A New English Dictionary
John Kersey, A New English Dictionary, registers about 28,000 lemmas, including many common words which had not been treated in the hard-word tradition (and had not been readily accessible in Lloyd’s rather recherché work of 1668). -
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. -
A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language
Noah Webster’s first dictionary, A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language, registers about 40,000 lemmas and promises a greater work to come; this would be published in 1828. -
Collection of Words and Phrases
John Pickering, A Vocabulary, or, Collection of Words and Phrases which have been supposed to be peculiar to the United States (first handwritten draft written 22 February 1810–1 January 1813) provides the first free-standing printed wordlist of a variety of English from beyond the British Isles. -
American Dictionary of the English Language
Noah Webster, American Dictionary of the English Language published November (the manuscript having been completed January 1825) in two large quarto volumes, registering some 70,000 lemmas, and showing the influence of Johnson’s Dictionary as revised by Todd in 1818. -
Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases
Peter Mark Roget, Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases published 11 June (printing, in a run of 1,000, began in March). -
Standard Dictionary of the English Language
First volume of Funk & Wagnall’s Standard Dictionary of the English Language; the second appeared in 1894, and the two together included 304,000 entries. A revision would appear in 1913 as the New Standard Dictionary of the English Language, offering 450,000 entries.