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Period: 1400 to
English Lexicography timeline
English lexicography as a practice of compiling dictionaries of various types has come a long way. Its origins go back to the period after the adoption of Christianity in England (597), for the appearance of the first English dictionaries is most closely connected with the study of Latin, a language that, starting from VI-VII, began to occupy an extremely important place in the social life of England and Europe as a whole. -
1440
The first English dictionary
The first English dictionary that had a name and was created to translate English words into Latin is the Promptuarium Parvulorum dictionary, created in 1440 by a monk from Norfolk, Galfrid Grammaticus, which included translations of more than 10 thousand English words into Latin. In 1499 this dictionary was printed. -
1500
Ortus Vocabulorum
The dictionary Ortus Vocabulorum was published in London in 1500 and containing twice as many words as Promptuarium. A feature that distinguishes this dictionary from earlier ones is that, although its articles consist of Latin words and their brief English translations, an interpretation in English is added to them from time to time. Ortus Vocabulorum is considered to be the first Latin-English dictionary printed in England. -
The English Dictionarie or a New Interpreter of hard English words
In 1623, Henry Cockeram published a dictionary called The English Dictionarie or a New Interpreter of hard English words. It is noteworthy that this was the first explanatory dictionary of the English language, in the name of which the word dictionary was used. -
Glossographia
Glossographia, published in 1656, is one of the dictionaries of "difficult words" from this period. Its author was Thomas Blount. He was the first English lexicographer to systematically indicate the etymologies of words included in his dictionary, despite the fact that many of the etymologies were inaccurate. -
The New World of English Words
Edward Phillips, the compiler of this dictionary, The New World of English Words, published in 1658 Most of the interpretations were borrowed from other lexicographers. The definitions that he made himself were inaccurate -
A Dictionary of the English Language
Published on 15 April 1755 and written by Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language, sometimes published as Johnson's Dictionary, is among the most influential dictionaries in the history of the English language. -
American Dictionary of the English Language
In 1828, at the age of 70, Webster published his "American Dictionary of the English Language" (ADEL) in two volumes, which included 70,000 articles, in contrast to all previously published dictionaries, each of which contained no more than 58,000 articles. -
A New Dictionary of the English Language
In 1837, the Charles Richardson dictionary was published in England – A New Dictionary of the English Language, which embodied a new, "historical" approach to compiling dictionaries. According to Richardson, the main task of lexicography is to trace the path of word development in reverse order and find its original meaning. Thus, the Richardson dictionary is to some extent a prototype of etymological dictionaries. -
The Oxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary is the largest lexicographic project of the 19th and 20th centuries. Work on it began, under the auspices of the Royal philological society, in 1857, the first volume was published in 1888, and the last in 1933. The dictionary's editor is sir James Murray. -
Collins English Dictionary
The Collins English Dictionary is a printed and online dictionary of English. It is published by HarperCollins in Glasgow. The edition of the dictionary in 1979 with Patrick Hanks as editor and Laurence Urdang as editorial director, was the first British to typeset from output from a computer database in a specified format. This meant that every aspect of an entry was handled by a different editor using different forms or templates.