Definition and history.
In its proper and most usual meaning a dictionary is a book containing a
collection of the words of a language, dialect or subject, arranged
alphabetically or in some other definite order, and with explanations in
the same or some other language. When the words are few in number, being
only a small part of those belonging to the subject, or when they are
given without explanation, or some only are explained, or the
explanations are partial, the work is called a _vocabulary_; and when
there is merely a list of explanations of the technical words and
expressions in some particular subject, a _glossary_. An alphabetical
arrangement of the words of some book or author with references to the
places where they occur is called an index (q.v.). When under each word
the phrases containing it are added to the references, the work is
called a _concordance_. Sometimes, however, these names are given to
true dictionaries; thus the great Italian dictionary of the _Accademia
della Crusca_, in six volumes folio, is called _Vocabolario_, and
Ernesti's dictionary to Cicero is called _Index_. When the words are
arranged according to a definite system of classification under heads
and subdivisions, according to their nature or their meaning, the book
is usually called a classed vocabulary; but when sufficient explanations
are given it is often accepted as a dictionary, like the _Onomasticon_
of Julius Pollux, or the native dictionaries of Sanskrit, Manchu and
many other languages.
Dictionaries were originally books of reference explaining the words of
a language or of some part of it. As the names of things, as well as
those of persons and places, are words, and often require explanation
even more than other classes of words, they were necessarily included in
dictionaries, and often to a very great extent. In time, books were
devoted to them alone, and were limited to special subjects, and these
have so multiplied, that dictionaries of things now rival in number and
variety those of words or of languages, while they often far surpass
them in bulk. There are dictionaries of biography and history, real and
fictitious, general and special, relating to men of all countries,
characters and professions; the English _Dictionary of National
Biography_ (see BIOGRAPHY) is a great instance of one form of these;
dictionaries of bibliography, relating to all books, or to those of some
particular kind or country; dictionaries of geography (sometimes called
_gazetteers_) of the whole world, of particular countries, or of small
districts, of towns and of villages, of castles, monasteries and other
buildings. There are dictionaries of philosophy; of the Bible; of
mathematics; of natural history, zoology, botany; of birds, trees,
plants and flowers; of chemistry, geology and mineralogy; of
architecture, painting and music; of medicine, surgery, anatomy,
pathology and physiology; of diplomacy; of law, canon, civil, statutory
and criminal; of political and social sciences; of agriculture, rural
economy and gardening; of commerce, navigation, horsemanship and the
military arts; of mechanics, machines and the manual arts. There are
dictionaries of antiquities, of chronology, of dates, of genealogy, of
heraldry, of diplomatics, of abbreviations, of useful receipts, of
monograms, of adulterations and of very many other subjects. These works
are separately referred to in the bibliographies attached to the
articles on the separate subjects. And lastly, there are dictionaries of
the arts and sciences, and their comprehensive offspring, encyclopaedias
(q.v.), which include in themselves every branch of knowledge. Neither
under the heading of _dictionary_ nor under that of _encyclopaedia_ do
we propose to include a mention of every work of its class, but many of
these will be referred to in the separate articles on the subjects to
which they pertain. And in this article we confine ourselves to an
account of those dictionaries which are primarily word-books. This is
practically the most convenient distinction from the subject-book or
encyclopaedia; though the two characters are often combined in one work.
Thus the _Century Dictionary_ has encyclopaedic features, while the
present edition of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, restoring its
earlier tradition but carrying out the idea more systematically, also
embodies dictionary features.
_Dictionarium_ is a word of low or modern Latinity;[1] _dictio_, from
which it was formed, was used in medieval Latin to mean a word.
_Lexicon_ is a corresponding word of Greek origin, meaning a book of or
for words--a dictionary. A _glossary_ is properly a collection of
unusual or foreign words requiring explanation. It is the name
frequently given to English dictionaries of dialects, which the Germans
usually call _idioticon_, and the Italians _vocabolario_. _Worterbuch_,
a book of words, was first used among the Germans, according to Grimm,
by Kramer (1719), imitated from the Dutch _woordenboek_. From the
Germans the Swedes and Danes adopted _ordbok_, _ordbog_. The Icelandic
_ordabok_, like the German, contains the genitive plural. The Slavonic
nations use _slovar_, _slovnik_, and the southern Slavs _ryetshnik_,
from _slovo_, _ryetsh_, a word, formed, like dictionary and lexicon,
without composition. Many other names have been given to dictionaries,
as _thesaurus_, _Sprachschatz_, _cornucopia_, _gazophylacium_,
_comprehensorium_, _catholicon_, to indicate their completeness;
_manipulus predicantium_, _promptorium puerorum_, _liber memorialis_,
_hortus vocabulorum_, _ionia_ (a violet bed), _alveary_ (a beehive),
_kamoos_ (the sea), _haft kulzum_ (the seven seas), _tsze tien_ (a
standard of character), _onomasticon_, _nomenclator_, _bibliotheca_,
_elucidario_, _Mundart-sammlung_, _clavis_, _scala_, _pharetra_,[2] _La
Crusca_ from the great Italian dictionary, and _Calepino_ (in Spanish
and Italian) from the Latin dictionary of Calepinus.
The tendency of great dictionaries is to unite in themselves all the
peculiar features of special dictionaries. A large dictionary is most
useful when a word is to be thoroughly studied, or when there is
difficulty in making out the meaning of a word or phrase. Special
dictionaries are more useful for special purposes; for instance,
synonyms are best studied in a dictionary of synonyms. And small
dictionaries are more convenient for frequent use, as in translating
from an unfamiliar language, for words may be found more quickly, and
they present the words and their meanings in a concentrated and compact
form, instead of being scattered over a large space, and separated by
other matter. Dictionaries of several languages, called _polyglots_, are
of different kinds. Some are polyglot in the vocabulary, but not in the
explanation, like Johnson's dictionary of Persian and Arabic explained
in English; some in the interpretation, but not in the vocabulary or
explanation, like _Calepini octoglotton_, a Latin dictionary of Latin,
with the meanings in seven languages. Many great dictionaries are now
polyglot in this sense. Some are polyglot in the vocabulary and
interpretation, but are explained in one language, like Jal's _Glossaire
nautique_, a glossary of sea terms in many languages, giving the
equivalents of each word in the other languages, but the explanation in
French. Pauthier's _Annamese Dictionary_ is polyglot in a peculiar way.
It gives the Chinese characters with their pronunciation in Chinese and
Annamese. Special dictionaries are of many kinds. There are technical
dictionaries of etymology, foreign words, dialects, secret languages,
slang, neology, barbarous words, faults of expression, choice words,
prosody, pronunciation, spelling, orators, poets, law, music, proper
names, particular authors, nouns, verbs, participles, particles, double
forms, difficulties and many others. Fick's dictionary (Gottingen, 1868,
8vo; 1874-1876, 8vo, 4 vols.) is a remarkable attempt to ascertain the
common language of the Indo-European nations before each of their great
separations. In the second edition of his _Etymologische Forschungen_
(Lemgo and Detmoldt, 1859-1873, 8vo, 7217 pages) Pott gives a
comparative lexicon of Indo-European roots, 2226 in number, occupying
5140 pages.
Methods.
At no time was progress in the making of general dictionaries so rapid
as during the second half of the 19th century. It is to be seen in three
things: in the perfecting of the theory of what a general dictionary
should be; in the elaboration of methods of collecting and editing
lexicographic materials; and in the magnitude and improved quality of
the work which has been accomplished or planned. Each of these can best
be illustrated from English lexicography, in which the process of
development has in all directions been carried farthest. The advance
that has been made in theory began with a radical change of opinion with
regard to the chief end of the general dictionary of a language. The
older view of the matter was that the lexicographer should furnish a
standard of usage--should register only those words which are, or at
some period of the language have been, "good" from a literary point of
view, with their "proper" senses and uses, or should at least furnish
the means of determining what these are. In other words, his chief duty
was conceived to be to sift and refine, to decide authoritatively
questions with regard to good usage, and thus to fix the language as
completely as might be possible within the limits determined by the
literary taste of his time. Thus the Accademia della Crusca, founded
near the close of the 16th century, was established for the purpose of
purifying in this way the Italian tongue, and in 1612 the _Vocabolario
degli Accademici della Crusca_, long the standard of that language, was
published. The Academie Francaise, the first edition of whose dictionary
appeared in 1694, had a similar origin. In England the idea of
constructing a dictionary upon this principle arose during the second
quarter of the 18th century. It was imagined by men of letters--among
them Alexander Pope--that the English language had then attained such
perfection that further improvement was hardly possible, and it was
feared that if it were not fixed by lexicographic authority
deterioration would soon begin. Since there was no English "Academy," it
was necessary that the task should fall to some one whose judgment would
command respect, and the man who undertook it was Samuel Johnson. His
dictionary, the first edition of which, in two folio volumes, appeared
in 1755, was in many respects admirable, but it was inadequate even as a
standard of the then existing literary usage. Johnson himself did not
long entertain the belief that the natural development of a language can
be arrested in that or in any other way. His work was, however,
generally accepted as a final authority, and the ideas upon which it was
founded dominated English lexicography for more than a century. The
first effective protest in England against the supremacy of this
literary view was made by Dean (later Archbishop) Trench, in a paper on
"Some Deficiencies in Existing English Dictionaries" read before the
Philological Society in 1857. "A dictionary," he said, "according to
that idea of it which seems to me alone capable of being logically
maintained, is an _inventory of the language_; much more, but this
primarily.... It is no task of the maker of it to select the _good_
words of the language.... The business which he has undertaken is to
collect and arrange _all_ words, whether good or bad, whether they
commend themselves to his judgment or otherwise.... _He is an historian
of_ [the language], _not a critic._" That is, for the literary view of
the chief end of the general dictionary should be substituted the
philological or scientific. In Germany this substitution had already
been effected by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in their dictionary of the
German language, the first volume of which appeared in 1854. In brief,
then, the modern view is that the general dictionary of a language
should be a record of all the words--current or obsolete--of that
language, with all their meanings and uses, but should not attempt to
be, except secondarily or indirectly, a guide to "good" usage. A
"standard" dictionary has, in fact, been recognized to be an
impossibility, if not an absurdity.
This theoretical requirement must, of course, be modified considerably
in practice. The date at which a modern language is to be regarded by
the lexicographer as "beginning" must, as a rule, be somewhat
arbitrarily chosen; while considerable portions of its earlier
vocabulary cannot be recovered because of the incompleteness of the
literary record. Moreover, not even the most complete dictionary can
include all the words which the records--earlier and later--actually
contain. Many words, that is to say, which are found in the literature
of a language cannot be regarded as, for lexicographic purposes,
belonging to that language; while many more may or may not be held to
belong to it, according to the judgment--almost the whim--of the
individual lexicographer. This is especially true of the English tongue.
"That vast aggregate of words and phrases which constitutes the
vocabulary of English-speaking men presents, to the mind that endeavours
to grasp it as a definite whole, the aspect of one of those nebulous
masses familiar to the astronomer, in which a clear and unmistakable
nucleus shades off on all sides, through zones of decreasing brightness,
to a dim marginal film that seems to end nowhere, but to lose itself
imperceptibly in the surrounding darkness" (Dr J. A. H. Murray, _Oxford
Dict._ General Explanations, p. xvii). This "marginal film" of words
with more or less doubtful claims to recognition includes thousands of
the terms of the natural sciences (the New-Latin classificatory names of
zoology and botany, names of chemical compounds and of minerals, and the
like); half-naturalized foreign words; dialectal words; slang terms;
trade names (many of which have passed or are passing into common use);
proper names and many more. Many of these even the most complete
dictionary should exclude; others it should include; but where the line
shall be drawn will always remain a vexed question.
Another important principle upon which Trench insisted, and which also
expresses a requirement of modern scientific philology, is that the
dictionary shall be not merely a record, but also an _historical_ record
of words and their uses. From the literary point of view the most
important thing is present usage. To that alone the idea of a "standard"
has any application. Dictionaries of the older type, therefore, usually
make the common, or "proper" or "root" meaning of a word the starting
point of its definition, and arrange its other senses in a logical or
accidental order commonly ignoring the historical order in which the
various meanings arose. Still less do they attempt to give data from
which the vocabulary of the language at any previous period may be
determined. The philologist, however, for whom the growth, or
progressive alteration, of a language is a fact of central importance,
regards no record of a language as complete which does not exhibit this
growth in its successive stages. He desires to know when and where each
word, and each form and sense of it, are first found in the language; if
the word or sense is obsolete, when it died; and any other fact that
throws light upon its history. He requires, accordingly, of the
lexicographer that, having ascertained these data, he shall make them
the foundation of his exposition--in particular, of the division and
arrangement of his definitions, that sense being placed first which
appeared first in order of time. In other words, each article in the
dictionary should furnish an orderly biography of the word of which it
treats, each word and sense being so dated that the exact time of its
appearance and the duration of its use may as nearly as possible be
determined. This, in principle, is the method of the new lexicography.
In practice it is subject to limitations similar to those of the
vocabulary mentioned above. Incompleteness of the early record is here
an even greater obstacle; and there are many words whose history is, for
one reason or another, so unimportant that to treat it elaborately would
be a waste of labour and space.
The adoption of the historical principle involves a further noteworthy
modification of older methods, namely, an important extension of the use
of quotations. To Dr Johnson belongs the credit of showing how useful,
when properly chosen, they may be, not only in corroborating the
lexicographer's statements, but also in revealing special shades of
meaning or variations of use which his definitions cannot well express.
No part of Johnson's work is more valuable than this. This idea was more
fully developed and applied by Dr Charles Richardson, whose _New
Dictionary of the English Language ... Illustrated by Quotations from
the Best Authors_ (1835-1836) still remains a most valuable collection
of literary illustrations. Lexicographers, however, have, with few
exceptions, until a recent date, employed quotations chiefly for the
ends just mentioned--as instances of use or as illustrations of correct
usage--with scarcely any recognition of their value as historical
evidence; and they have taken them almost exclusively from the works of
the "best" authors. But since all the data upon which conclusions with
regard to the history of a word can be based must be collected from the
literature of the language, it is evident that, in so far as the
lexicographer is required to furnish evidence for an historical
inference, a quotation is the best form in which he can give it. In
fact, extracts, properly selected and grouped, are generally sufficient
to show the entire meaning and biography of a word without the aid of
elaborate definitions. The latter simply save the reader the trouble of
drawing the proper conclusions for himself. A further rule of the new
lexicography, accordingly, is that quotations should be used, primarily,
as historical evidence, and that the history of words and meanings
should be exhibited by means of them. The earliest instance of use that
can be found, and (if the word or sense is obsolete) the latest, are as
a rule to be given; while in the case of an important word or sense,
instances taken from successive periods of its currency also should be
cited. Moreover, a quotation which contains an important bit of
historical evidence must be used, whether its source is "good," from the
literary point of view, or not--whether it is a classic of the language
or from a daily newspaper; though where choice is possible, preference
should, of course, be given to quotations extracted from the works of
the best writers. This rule does not do away with the illustrative use
of quotations, which is still recognized as highly important, but it
subordinates it to their historical use. It is necessary to add that it
implies that the extracts must be given exactly, and in the original
spelling and capitalization, accurately dated, and furnished with a
precise reference to author, book, volume, page and edition; for
insistence upon these requirements--which are obviously important,
whatever the use of the quotation may be--is one of the most noteworthy
of modern innovations. Johnson usually gave simply the author's name,
and often quoted from memory and inaccurately; and many of his
successors to this day have followed--altogether or to some extent--his
example.
The chief difficulty in the way of this use of quotations--after the
difficulty of collection--is that of finding space for them in a
dictionary of reasonable size. Preference must be given to those which
are essential, the number of those which are cited merely on methodical
grounds being made as small as possible. It is hardly necessary to add
that the negative evidence furnished by quotations is generally of
little value; one can seldom, that is, be certain that the lexicographer
has actually found the earliest or the latest use, or that the word or
sense has not been current during some intermediate period from which he
has no quotations.
Lastly, a much more important place in the scheme of the ideal
dictionary is now assigned to the _etymology_ of words. This may be
attributed, in part, to the recent rapid development of etymology as a
science, and to the greater abundance of trustworthy data; but it is
chiefly due to the fact that from the historical point of view the
connexion between that section of the biography of a word which lies
within the language--subsequent, that is, to the time when the language
may, for lexicographical purposes, be assumed to have begun, or to the
time when the word was adopted or invented--and its antecedent history
has become more vital and interesting. Etymology, in other words, is
essentially the history of the _form_ of a word up to the time when it
became a part of the language, and is, in a measure, an extension of the
history of the development of the word in the language. Moreover, it is
the only means by which the exact relations of allied words can be
ascertained, and the separation of words of the same form but of diverse
origin (homonyms) can be effected, and is thus, for the dictionary, the
foundation of all _family history_ and correct _genealogy_. In fact, the
attention that has been paid to these two points in the best recent
lexicography is one of its distinguishing and most important
characteristics. Related to the etymology of words are the changes in
their form which may have occurred while they have been in use as parts
of the language--modifications of their pronunciation, corruptions by
popular etymology or false associations, and the like. The facts with
regard to these things which the wide research necessitated by the
historical method furnishes abundantly to the modern lexicographer are
often among the most novel and interesting of his acquisitions.
It should be added that even approximate conformity to the theoretical
requirements of modern lexicography as above outlined is possible only
under conditions similar to those under which the Oxford _New English
Dictionary_ was undertaken (see below). The labour demanded is too vast,
and the necessary bulk of the dictionary too great. When, however, a
language is recorded in one such dictionary, those of smaller size and
more modest pretensions can rest upon it as an authority and conform to
it as a model so far as their special limitations permit.
The ideal thus developed is primarily that of the general dictionary of
the purely philological type, but it applies also to the encyclopaedic
dictionary. In so far as the latter is strictly lexicographic--deals
with words as words, and not with the things they denote--it should be
made after the model of the former, and is defective to the extent in
which it deviates from it. The addition of encyclopaedic matter to the
philological in no way affects the general principles involved. It may,
however, for practical reasons, modify their application in various
ways. For example, the number of obsolete and dialectal words included
may be much diminished and the number of scientific terms (for instance,
new Latin botanical and zoological names) be increased; and the relative
amount of space devoted to etymologies and quotations may be lessened.
In general, since books of this kind are designed to serve more or less
as works of general reference, the making of them must be governed by
considerations of practical utility which the compilers of a purely
philological dictionary are not obliged to regard. The encyclopaedic
type itself, although it has often been criticized as hybrid--as a
mixture of two things which should be kept distinct--is entirely
defensible. Between the dictionary and the encyclopaedia the dividing
line cannot sharply be drawn. There are words the meaning of which
cannot be explained fully without some description of things, and, on
the other hand, the description of things and processes often involves
the definition of names. To the combination of the two objection cannot
justly be made, so long as it is effected in a way--with a selection of
material--that leaves the dictionary essentially a dictionary and not an
encyclopaedia. Moreover, the large vocabulary of the general dictionary
makes it possible to present certain kinds of encyclopaedic matter with
a degree of fulness and a convenience of arrangement which are possible
in no single work of any other class. In fact, it may be said that if
the encyclopaedic dictionary did not exist it would have to be invented;
that its justification is its indispensableness. Not the least of its
advantages is that it makes legitimate the use of diagrams and pictorial
illustrations, which, if properly selected and executed, are often
valuable aids to definition.
On its practical side the advance in lexicography has consisted in the
elaboration of methods long in use rather than in the invention of new
ones. The only way to collect the data upon which the vocabulary, the
definitions and the history are to be based is, of course, to search for
them in the written monuments of the language, as all lexicographers who
have not merely borrowed from their predecessors have done. But the
wider scope and special aims of the new lexicography demand that the
investigation shall be vastly more comprehensive, systematic and
precise. It is necessary, in brief, that, as far as may be possible, the
literature (of all kinds) of every period of the language shall be
examined systematically, in order that all the words, and senses and
forms of words, which have existed during any period may be found, and
that enough excerpts (carefully verified, credited and dated) to cover
all the essential facts shall be made. The books, pamphlets, journals,
newspapers, and so on which must thus be searched will be numbered by
thousands, and the quotations selected may (as in the case of the Oxford
_New English Dictionary_) be counted by millions. This task is beyond
the powers of any one man, even though he be a Johnson, or a Littre or a
Grimm, and it is now assigned to a corps of readers whose number is
limited only by the ability of the editor to obtain such assistance. The
modern method of editing the material thus accumulated--the actual work
of compilation--also is characterized by the application of the
principle of the division of labour. Johnson boasted that his dictionary
was written with but little assistance from the learned, and the same
was in large measure true of that of Littre. Such attempts on the part
of one man to write practically the whole of a general dictionary are no
longer possible, not merely because of the vast labour and philological
research necessitated by modern aims, but more especially because the
immense development of the vocabulary of the special sciences renders
indispensable the assistance, in the work of definition, of persons who
are expert in those sciences. The tendency, accordingly, has been to
enlarge greatly the editorial staff of the dictionary, scores of
sub-editors and contributors being now employed where a dozen or fewer
were formerly deemed sufficient. In other words, the making of a
"complete" dictionary has become a co-operative enterprise, to the
success of which workers in all the fields of literature and science
contribute.
The most complete exemplification of these principles and methods is the
_Oxford New English Dictionary, on historical principles, founded mainly
on materials collected by the Philological Society_. This monumental
work originated in the suggestion of Trench that an attempt should be
made, under the direction of the Philological Society, to complete the
vocabulary of existing dictionaries and to supply the historical
information which they lacked. The suggestion was adopted, considerable
material was collected, and Mr Herbert Coleridge was appointed general
editor. He died in 1861, and was succeeded by Dr F. J. Furnivall.
Little, however, was done, beyond the collection of quotations--about
2,000,000 of which were gathered--until in 1878 the expense of printing
and publishing the proposed dictionary was assumed by the Delegates of
the University Press, and the editorship was entrusted to Dr (afterwards
Sir) J. A. H. Murray. As the historical point of beginning, the middle
of the 12th century was selected, all words that were obsolete at that
date being excluded, though the history of words that were current both
before and after that date is given in its entirety; and it was decided
that the search for quotations--which, according to the original design,
was to cover the entire literature down to the beginning of the 16th
century and as much of the subsequent literature (especially the works
of the more important writers and works on special subjects) as might be
possible--should be made more thorough. More than 800 readers, in all
parts of the world, offered their aid; and when the preface to the first
volume appeared in 1888, the editor was able to announce that the
readers had increased to 1300, and that 3,500,000 of quotations, taken
from the writings of more than 5000 authors, had already been amassed.
The whole work was planned to be completed in ten large volumes, each
issued first in smaller parts. The first part was issued in 1884, and by
the beginning of 1910 the first part of the letter S had been reached.
The historical method of exposition, particularly by quotations, is
applied in the _New English Dictionary_, if not in all cases with entire
success, yet, on the whole, with a regularity and a precision which
leave little to be desired. A minor fault is that excerpts from second
or third rate authors have occasionally been used where better ones from
writers of the first class either must have been at hand or could have
been found. As was said above, the literary quality of the question is
highly important even in historical lexicography, and should not be
neglected unnecessarily. Other special features of the book are the
completeness with which variations of pronunciation and orthography
(with dates) are given; the fulness and scientific excellence of the
etymologies, which abound in new information and corrections of old
errors; the phonetic precision with which the present (British)
pronunciation is indicated; and the elaborate subdivision of meanings.
The definitions as a whole are marked by a high degree of accuracy,
though in a certain number of cases (not explicable by the date of the
volumes) the lists of meanings are not so good as one would expect, as
compared (say) with the _Century Dictionary_. Work of such magnitude
and quality is possible, practically, only when the editor of the
dictionary can command not merely the aid of a very large number of
scholars and men of science, but their gratuitous aid. In this the _New
English Dictionary_ has been singularly fortunate. The conditions under
which it originated, and its aim, have interested scholars everywhere,
and led them to contribute to the perfecting of it their knowledge and
time. The long list of names of such helpers in Sir J. A. H. Murray's
preface is in curious contrast with their absence from Dr Johnson's and
the few which are given in that of Littre. The editor's principal
assistants were Dr Henry Bradley and Dr W. A. Craigie. Of the dictionary
as a whole it may be said that it is one of the greatest achievements,
whether in literature or science, of modern English scholarship and
research.
The _New English Dictionary_ furnishes for the first time data from
which the extent of the English word-store at any given period, and
the direction and rapidity of its growth, can fairly be estimated. For
this purpose the materials furnished by the older dictionaries are
quite insufficient, on account of their incompleteness and
unhistorical character. For example 100 pages of the _New English
Dictionary_ (from the letter H) contain 1002 words, of which, as the
dated quotations show, 585 were current in 1750 (though some, of
course, were very rare, some dialectal, and so on), 191 were obsolete
at that date, and 226 have since come into use. But of the more than
700 words--current or obsolete--which Johnson might thus have
recorded, he actually did record only about 300. Later dictionaries
give more of them, but they in no way show their status at the date in
question. It is worth noting that the figures given seem to indicate
that not very many more words have been added to the vocabulary of the
language during the past 150 years than had been lost by 1750. The
pages selected, however, contain comparatively few recent scientific
terms. A broader comparison would probably show that the gain has been
more than twice as great as the loss.
In the _Deutsches Worterbuch_ of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm the scientific
spirit, as was said above, first found expression in general
lexicography. The desirability of a complete inventory and investigation
of German words was recognized by Leibnitz and by various 18th-century
scholars, but the plan and methods of the Grimms were the direct product
of the then new scientific philology. Their design, in brief, was to
give an exhaustive account of the words of the literary language (New
High German) from about the end of the 15th century, including their
earlier etymological and later history, with references to important
dialectal words and forms; and to illustrate their use and history
abundantly by quotations. The first volume appeared in 1854. Jacob Grimm
(died 1863) edited the first, second (with his brother, who died in
1859), third and a part of the fourth volumes; the others have been
edited by various distinguished scholars. The scope and methods of this
dictionary have been broadened somewhat as the work has advanced. In
general it may be said that it differs from the _New English Dictionary_
chiefly in its omission of pronunciations and other pedagogic matter;
its irregular treatment of dates; its much less systematic and less
lucid statement of etymologies; its less systematic and less fruitful
use of quotations; and its less convenient and less intelligible
arrangement of material and typography.
These general principles lie also at the foundation of the scholarly
_Dictionnaire de la langue francaise_ of E. Littre, though they are
there carried out less systematically and less completely. In the
arrangement of the definitions the first place is given to the most
primitive meaning of the word instead of to the most common one, as in
the dictionary of the Academy; but the other meanings follow in an order
that is often logical rather than historical. Quotations also are
frequently used merely as literary illustrations, or are entirely
omitted; in the special paragraphs on the history of words before the
16th century, however, they are put to a strictly historical use. This
dictionary--perhaps the greatest ever compiled by one man--was published
1863-1872. (Supplement, 1878.)
The _Thesaurus Linguae Latinae_, prepared under the auspices of the
German Academies of Berlin, Gottingen, Leipzig, Munich and Vienna, is a
notable application of the principles and practical co-operative method
of modern lexicography to the classical tongues. The plan of the work is
to collect quotations which shall register, with its full context, every
word (except the most familiar particles) in the text of each Latin
author down to the middle of the 2nd century A.D., and to extract all
important passages from all writers of the following centuries down to
the 7th; and upon these materials to found a complete historical
dictionary of the Latin language. The work of collecting quotations was
begun in 1894, and the first part of the first volume has been
published.
In the making of all these great dictionaries (except, of course, the
last) the needs of the general public as well as those of scholars have
been kept in view. But the type to which the general dictionary designed
for popular use has tended more and more to conform is the
_encyclopaedic_. This combination of lexicon and encyclopaedia is
exhibited in an extreme--and theoretically objectionable--form in the
_Grand dictionnaire universel du XIX^e siecle_ of Pierre Larousse.
Besides common words and their definitions, it contains a great many
proper names, with a correspondingly large number of biographical,
geographical, historical and other articles, the connexion of which with
the strictly lexicographical part is purely mechanical. Its utility,
which--notwithstanding its many defects--is very great, makes it,
however, a model in many respects. Fifteen volumes were published
(1866-1876), and supplements were brought out later (1878-1890). The
_Nouveau Larousse illustre_ started publication in 1901, and was
completed in 1904 (7 vols.). This is not an abridgment or a fresh
edition of the _Grand Dictionnaire_ of Pierre Larousse, but a new and
distinct publication.
The most notable work of this class, in English, is the _Century
Dictionary_, an American product, edited by Professor W. D. Whitney, and
published 1889-1891 in six volumes, containing 7046 pages (large
quarto). It conforms to the philological mode in giving with great
fulness the older as well as the present vocabulary of the language, and
in the completeness of its etymologies; but it does not attempt to give
the full history of every word within the language. Among its other more
noteworthy characteristics are the inclusion of a great number of modern
scientific and technical words, and the abundance of its quotations. The
quotations are for the most part provided with references, but they are
not dated. Even when compared with the much larger _New English
Dictionary_, the _Century's_ great merit is the excellent enumeration of
meanings, and the accuracy of its explanations; in this respect it is
often better and fuller than the _New English_. In the application of
the encyclopaedic method this dictionary is conservative, excluding,
with a few exceptions, proper names, and restricting, for the most part,
the encyclopaedic matter to descriptive and other details which may
legitimately be added to the definitions. Its pictorial illustrations
are very numerous and well executed. In the manner of its compilation it
is a good example of modern cooperative dictionary-making, being the
joint product of a large number of specialists. Next to the _New English
Dictionary_ it is the most complete and scholarly of English lexicons.
_Bibliography._--The following list of dictionaries (from the 9th
edition of this work, with occasional corrections) is given for its
historical interest, but in recent years dictionary-making has been so
abundant that no attempt is made to be completely inclusive of later
works; the various articles on languages may be consulted for these. The
list is arranged geographically by families of languages, or by regions.
In each group the order, when not alphabetical, is usually from north to
south, extinct languages generally coming first, and dialects being
placed under their language. Dictionaries forming parts of other works,
such as travels, histories, transactions, periodicals, reading-books,
&c., are generally excluded. The system here adopted was chosen as on
the whole the one best calculated to keep together dictionaries
naturally associated. The languages to be considered are too many for an
alphabetical arrangement, which ignores all relations both natural and
geographical, and too few to require a strict classification by
affinities, by which the European languages, which for many reasons
should be kept together, would be dispersed. Under either system,
Arabic, Persian and Turkish, whose dictionaries are so closely
connected, would be widely separated. A wholly geographical arrangement
would be inconvenient, especially in Europe. Any system, however, which
attempts to arrange in a consecutive series the great network of
languages by which the whole world is enclosed, must be open to some
objections; and the arrangement adopted in this list has produced some
anomalies and dispersions which might cause inconvenience if not pointed
out. The old Italic languages are placed under Latin, all dialects of
France under French (but Provencal as a distinct language), and
Wallachian among Romanic languages. Low German and its dialects are not
separated from High German. Basque is placed after Celtic; Albanian,
Gipsy and Turkish at the end of Europe, the last being thus separated
from its dialects and congeners in Northern and Central Asia, among
which are placed the Kazan dialect of Tatar, Samoyed and Ostiak.
Accadian is placed after Assyrian among the Semitic languages, and
Maltese as a dialect of Arabic; while the Ethiopic is among African
languages as it seemed undesirable to separate it from the other
Abyssinian languages, or these from their neighbours to the north and
south. Circassian and Ossetic are joined to the first group of Aryan
languages lying to the north-west of Persia, and containing Armenian,
Georgian and Kurd. The following is the order of the groups, some of the
more important languages, that is, of those best provided with
dictionaries, standing alone:--
EUROPE: Greek, Latin, French, Romance, Teutonic (Scandinavian and
German), Celtic, Basque, Baltic, Slavonic, Ugrian, Gipsy, Albanian.
ASIA: Semitic, Armenian, Persian, Sanskrit, Indian, Indo-Chinese, Malay
Archipelago, Philippines, Chinese, Japanese, Northern and Central Asia.
AFRICA: Egypt and Abyssinia, Eastern Africa, Southern, Western, Central,
Berber.