Dictionary

Life of a dictionary!

By joselozanofigueroa
  • 2300 BCE

    The first "dictionary"

    The first "dictionary"
    This year is when the oldest known dictionaries were found, containing Akkadian Empire cuneiform language in tablets with what appears as a Sumerian–Akkadian wordlist. It was discovered in Ebla (modern Syria) and dated roughly 2300 BCE.
  • Period: 2300 BCE to

    Life of a dictionary!

    Here we will learn about the creation of the dictionary and the different stages it went through to become the dictionary we all know today!
  • 800 BCE

    Survival of the fittest.

    Survival of the fittest.
    After many years passed, a chinese dictionary, was the earliest surviving monolingual dictionary; although some information sources cite this shizhoupian book as a "dictionary", modern scholarship considers it a calligraphic compendium of Chinese characters from Zhou dynasty bronzes.
  • 400

    Here come the greeks!

    Here come the greeks!
    The greek man Philitas of Cos wrote a pioneering vocabulary Disorderly Words (Ἄτακτοι γλῶσσαι, Átaktoi glôssai) which explained the meanings of rare Homeric and other literary words, words from local dialects, and technical terms.
  • 1220

    It's called Dictionary!

    It's called Dictionary!
    The earliest dictionaries in the English language were glossaries of French, Spanish or Latin words along with their definitions in English. Arriving to the word "dictionary" that was invented by an Englishman called John of Garland in 1220.
  • 1287

    Let's go medieval.

    Let's go medieval.
    Now arriving to medieval Europe, glossaries with equivalents for Latin words in vernacular or simpler Latin were in use. For example, The Catholicon (1287) by Johannes Balbus, was a large grammatical work with an alphabetical lexicon and was widely adopted as It served as the basis for several bilingual dictionaries and was one of the earliest books (in 1460) to be printed.

  • Viva España!

    Viva España!
    The first monolingual dictionary written in Europe was the Spanish one called "Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española", written by Sebastián Covarrubias and published in 1611 in Madrid, Spain. giving way in 1612 for the first edition of the "Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca", an Italian dictionary was published. It served as the model for similar works in French and English

  • Copy cat!

    Copy cat!
    In 1656, "Glossographia" by Thomas Blount was published and contains more than 10,000 words along with their etymologies or histories. Later in 1658, Edward Phillips wrote another dictionary entitled "The New World of English Words: Or a General Dictionary" which boldly plagiarized Blount's work, making the two denounce each other. This issue created even more interest in the dictionaries.

  • RAE!

    RAE!
    The Real Academia Española in Spain, published the first edition of the "Diccionario de la lengua española" in 1780 and their "Diccionario de Autoridades", which included quotes taken from various literary works, was published in 1726. Forming the basis of all similar works soon to be published.

  • Now in the U.S.A!

    Now in the U.S.A!
    In 1806, American Noah Webster published his first dictionary, "A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language" and in 1807 Webster began compiling an expanded and fully comprehensive dictionary, "An American Dictionary of the English Language"; it took twenty-seven years to complete. To evaluate the etymology of words in this dictionary, Webster learned twenty-six languages, including Old English (Anglo-Saxon), German, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, Hebrew, Arabic, and Sanskrit.

  • To the world!

    To the world!
    Webster's dictionary was acquired by G & C Merriam Co. in 1843, after his death, and has since been published in many revised editions. Merriam-Webster was acquired by Encyclopedia Britannica in 1964 publishing what we know today as a common dictionary.