The first edition of this dictionary having been exhausted, it has been
extensively revised, and certain new features and alterations have been
introduced into it.
1. The principle of arranging all words according to their actual
spelling has been to a considerable extent abandoned. It was admittedly
an unscientific one, and opened the door to a good many errors and
inconsistencies. The head form in this edition may be either a
normalised form or one which actually occurs.
2. Words beginning with _ge-_ have been distributed among the letters of
the alphabet which follow that prefix, and the sign + has been employed
instead of _ge-_ in order to make the break in alphabetical continuity
as little apparent to the eye as possible. The sign ± has been used
where a word occurs both with and without the prefix.
3. References to Cook’s translation of Sievers’ _Anglo-Saxon Grammar_,
and to the Grammatical Introduction to Sweet’s _Reader_ have been taken
out, as Wright’s or Wyatt’s _Old English Grammar_ will have taken their
place with most English students.
4. A new feature which, it is hoped, will prove widely useful, is the
introduction of references to all, or nearly all, the headings in the
_New English Dictionary_ under which quotations from Anglo-Saxon texts
are to be found. A vast mass of valuable information as to the
etymology, meaning and occurrence of Old English words is contained in
that Dictionary, but is to a very large extent overlooked because it is
to be found under the head of words which are now obsolete, so that
unless one happens to know what was the last form which they had in
Middle English, one does not know how to get at it. This information
will be made readily available by the references in the present work,
which will form a practically complete index to the Anglo-Saxon material
in the larger dictionary and will at the same time put the student on
the track of interesting Middle English examples of the use of Old
English words. Besides directing the reader (by means of quotation
marks) to the heading in the _New English Dictionary_ where the relevant
matter may be found, an indication has been given of the texts from
which quotations are made therein, when these do not exceed four or
five[1].
[Footnote 1: As regards the letter W and some small parts of other
letters which have not yet appeared in the _NED_, a reference has
been given to its abridgement (_The Concise Oxford Dictionary_).]
5. There have been many valuable contributions to Anglo-Saxon
lexicography (by Napier, Swaen, Schlütter, Förster, Wülfing and others)
since the first edition of this Dictionary appeared, and these have been
made use of, but (as before) unglossaried matter has not been
systematically searched for words not hitherto recorded in Anglo-Saxon
Dictionaries[2].
[Footnote 2: The part of the Supplement to ‘Bosworth-Toller’ which
has already appeared shows that Professor Toller is examining such
matter with great care and thoroughness.]
6. The number of references to passages has been very largely increased.
All words occurring only in poetical texts have been marked. If they
occur more than once they bear the sign †, if only once, a reference to
the passage is generally given. If not they are marked ‡. As regards
prose texts, the rule has been only to give references to particular
passages in the case of rare words,--more especially ἅπαξ λεγόμενα. The
references to AO, CP and Æ which were given in the earlier edition have
been retained, as a useful indication that the word occurs in Early West
Saxon or Late West Saxon prose, as the case may be.
7. By various devices it has been found possible, while much increasing
the amount of matter in the book, to add very slightly to the number of
pages, and at the same time to reduce the number of columns on a page
from three to two. Most of these devices are more or less mechanical,
but one method of saving space may be mentioned. Certain compound words,
descriptive of places, which, as far as I know, occur only in charters
and which may often be more correctly regarded as proper nouns, have not
been separately inserted. Their meaning can however always be
ascertained by referring to their components, and where the abbreviation
Mdf is inserted the reader will understand that examples of words so
compounded, or of the components, or of both, will be found in Birch’s
_Cartularium Saxonicum_, or in Earle’s _Land Charters_, and that
references to those examples are given in Middendorff’s _Altenglisches
Flurnamenbuch_.
8. In the List of Abbreviations, etc. at the commencement of the book,
editions of texts which are furnished with a glossary have been
specially indicated.