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Period: 600 to 700
'Leiden Glossary'
One of the first glossaries in which the pairs of equivalents are arranged in the order of their occurrence in the text. -
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. -
1573
'Alvearic or Tripple Dictionarie, English, Latin, French' by J. Baret
The materials for the volume were gradually collected during eighteen years by Baret's many pupils, and he entitled it, on that account, an "Alvearie", or beehive. Every English word is first explained, and its equivalent given in Latin and French. Two indexes at the end of the volume collect the Latin and French words occurring in the text. -
'A Dictionarie French and English' by Claudius Hollyband
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'A worlde of wordes, or, Most copious, and exact dictionarie in Italian and English'
It is an Italian–English Dictionary, and, as such, only the second of its kind in England and much fuller than the short work published by William Thomas in the 1550s – with 44,000 words as opposed to Thomas's 6,000. -
'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
The first monolingual dictionary of English. It concentrated on those words which could cause problems for native speakers of English. Robert Cawdrey who was a schoolmaster aimed at extending the vocabulary of those who spoke only English and did not know foreign languages. -
'Glossagraphia' by Thomas Blount
Dictionaries of hard words dominated in the 17th century and gradually they became fairly sophisticated reference book which could be written only by professionals. This dictionary comprised not only borrowings but also many terms of different branches of science.
Thomas Blount devised very short and precise definitions, he indicated the origin of the word and its field of usage, and sometimes he mentioned the name of the author, who had used the word in question. -
'An Universal Etymological English Dictionary' by Nathaniel Bailey
The first attempt at a dictionary whose word-list comprised words of different degrees of complexity, both native and non-native. 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. In the dictionary there are over 500 pictures illustrating many technical terms. -
'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'
Had two parts. The first part consisted of 'Preface't; '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 most important innovations of the Dictionary were a) clear differentiation of senses (separate meanings were neatly arranged and enumerated); b) each meaning was illustrated by quotations from 'the best writers'. -
'A School Dictionary' by S.Johnson
Had only 4,150 entries and did not differ from British
dictionaries. In 1800 S.Johnson together with John Elliot published a new dictionary 'A selected, pronouncing accented dictionary' which was also a learner's dictionary. It has a reference section containing some information on grammar, etymology and derivation. The
word-list comprised not only native English words but also a few borrowings from Indian languages. -
'Compendious Dictionary of the English Dictionary' by Noah Webster
His first full-scale lexicographic work. It contained 40.600 headwords. -
'American Dictionary of the English Language' by Noah Webster
Had 70,000 entries. Noah Webster's dictionary contained many Americanisms, that is words borrowed from Indian languages and Spanish which became part and parcel of the American variant of
English in the 19th century. He introduced the alphabetical system of transcription where he used letters and combinations of letters instead of transcription signs. -
Period: to
'Oxford English Dictionary' by S. Johnson
Originally called the 'New English Dictionary'. 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 first volume was published in 1888, the last one — in 1928, and a Supplement — in 1933.
The second edition of the OED which recorded the language of the 20th century was published in 1989. -
'New Method English Dictionary' by M.West and J.G.Endicott
The first monolingual dictionary of English for foreign learners. 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. This facilitated the use of the dictionary by a foreigner with limited knowledge of English. -
'Idiomatic and Syntactic English Dictionary' by A.S.Homby, E.V.Gatenby and H.Wakefield
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. -
'Lexicographic Year'
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. OALD 6, LDCE 4 and COBUILD 3 came out in 2000-2002. -
Historical Thesaurus of the OED
The Historical Thesaurus of the OED is a unique resource charting the semantic development of the huge and varied vocabulary of English. It is the first comprehensive historical thesaurus ever produced for any language, and contains almost every word in English from Old English to the present day. It includes 800,000 words and meanings, in 235,000 entry categories.