The first word in the english dictionary

“Aardvark.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/aardvark.

The aardvark is not mythical, like the phoenix, since it really exists, but it has its own urban myth. Ask anyone which word comes first in an English dictionary, and they will assuredly answer “aardvark“.

What is the last word in the dictionary?

‘Zyzzyva’ – a tropical beetle – has become the new last word in the Oxford English Dictionary with the latest quarterly update which added over 1,200 new words, phrases and senses. Until now, the last alphabetic entry in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) was zythum, a kind of malt beer brewed in ancient Egypt.

What’s the 2nd word in the dictionary?

The second word in the English dictionary is the word consisting of the double letters A A. The word AA is a basaltic lava that forms rough, jagged masses with a light frothy texture.

What is the first word in the U section of the dictionary?

Dictionary Scavenger Hunt

What word takes 3 hours to say?

protein titin
Note the ellipses. All told, the full chemical name for the human protein titin is 189,819 letters, and takes about three-and-a-half hours to pronounce. The problem with including chemical names is that there’s essentially no limit to how long they can be.

What word has all 26 letters in it?

An English pangram is a sentence that contains all 26 letters of the English alphabet. The most well known English pangram is probably “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog”. My favorite pangram is “Amazingly few discotheques provide jukeboxes.”

What is the oldest swear word?

Fart
Fart, as it turns out, is one of the oldest rude words we have in the language: Its first record pops up in roughly 1250, meaning that if you were to travel 800 years back in time just to let one rip, everyone would at least be able to agree upon what that should be called.

What is a word that begins with Z?

• zags.
• zany.
• zaps.
• zarf.
• zeal.
• zebu.
• zeda.
• zeds.

What is the shortest word in the world?

Eunoia
Eunoia, at six letters long, is the shortest word in the English language that contains all five main vowels. Seven letter words with this property include adoulie, douleia, eucosia, eulogia, eunomia, eutopia, miaoued, moineau, sequoia, and suoidea. (The scientific name iouea is a genus of Cretaceous fossil sponges.)

What does Second mean on TikTok?

“Second Time Around” is also an audio on TikTok, though it’s only used on less than 100 posts so far. It’s from the song “Second Time Around” by Quinn XCII. The song talks about asking for another chance after making a mistake.

What’s the longest word in the dictionary?

pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis
The longest word in any of the major English language dictionaries is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, a word that refers to a lung disease contracted from the inhalation of very fine silica particles, specifically from a volcano; medically, it is the same as silicosis.

What is the third word?

Everyone knows what the third word means. What is the third word? The answer is “energy”. The riddle says that the word ends in the letters g-r-y; it says nothing about the order of the letters.

What word starts with E?

5 letter words that start with E

• eager.
• eagle.
• eagre.
• eared.
• earls.
• early.
• earns.
• earth.

What is G word?

(humorous) Any word beginning with g that is not normally taboo but is considered (often humorously) to be so in the given context.

What is the T word?

t-word (plural t-words) (humorous) tax or taxes, treated as if it were taboo. quotations ▼ (euphemistic) The word tranny, regarded as offensive and taboo.

Is there a word with 1000 letters?

pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis
It’s a technical word referring to the lung disease more commonly known as silicosis.

Is there a word without a vowel?

Words with no vowels. Cwm and crwth do not contain the letters a, e, i, o, u, or y, the usual vowels (that is, the usual symbols that stand for vowel sounds) in English.Shh, psst, and hmm do not have vowels, either vowel symbols or vowel sounds. There is some controversy whether they are in fact “words,” however.

Is Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis the longest word?

1 Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis (forty-five letters) is lung disease caused by the inhalation of silica or quartz dust.6 Incomprehensibilities set the record in the 1990s as the longest word “in common usage.” How many times have you used this twenty-one-letter term?

What is the 27th letter in the alphabet?

The ampersand often appeared as a character at the end of the Latin alphabet, as for example in Byrhtferð’s list of letters from 1011. Similarly, & was regarded as the 27th letter of the English alphabet, as taught to children in the US and elsewhere.

What start with E and ends with E?

Answer: The answer is ENVELOPE. It starts with E, ends with E and has only one letter in it, i.e, you can keep only one letter inside the envelope.

The Development of the English Dictionary

Although the printing press made standardising English spelling much easier, it was not until 130 year later with the arrival of the first English dictionary that people could confirm the formal correctness of a written word.

Dictionaries provided readily verifiable, written confirmation of the rules of English spelling.

Due to the development of the English dictionary, the Early Modern period saw a significant breakthrough in the standardisation of the English language.

Robert Cawdrey’s A Table Alphabeticall

The first English dictionary, A Table Alphabeticall, was compiled by English school teacher, Robert Cawdrey and published in London in 1604. However, it was found rather unreliable.

The first edition of the dictionary was just 120 pages long and contained only 2,543 words, many of which were obscure.

The primary focus of Cawdrey’s work were those words he thought of as ‘hard’ for the general public because they had foreign roots. This meant that most common words were not included.

Spelling Checks with Brief Definitions

Another problem for Cawdrey’s dictionary was that its definitions were very brief and often consisted of only one word, making it more a book of synonyms than a useful academic reference.

Although the reader could check their spelling using the dictionary, they had no way of finding out what the word actually meant or how it should be used.

Despite its shortcomings, Cawdrey’s A Table Alphabeticall proved quite popular, and ran into four editions. Each edition increased in length with the final edition in 1617 containing a total of 3,264 words.

The last surviving first edition of Cawdrey’s dictionary can be found in the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford, which is one of the oldest libraries in Europe.

Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language

It was not until 1755 when Samuel Johnson produced A Dictionary of the English Language that the dialect of London became the official English standard.

Johnson’s comprehensive dictionary took seven scholars eight years to complete. The resulting reference work listed 40,000 words and contained detailed definitions, illustrations and quotations to fully explain the background of each word and its usage.

This dictionary was a great achievement. Johnson spearheaded the idea of using literary quotations to aid in the definitions, making liberal use of Shakespeare and Milton.

Johnson’s personality also comes through in his reference work and it contains various reflections of his own right-wing political slant, along with humorous asides and even some of his own invented words.

Insights into Language Usage

Despite Johnson’s own opinions and idiosyncrasies coming through on every page, his dictionary proved hugely popular and was highly respected.

With Johnson’s reliable English dictionary, people could now find out exactly how to spell many common and uncommon words in the English language, as well as gain insight into their proper usage, historical background and literary use.

The official spellings and definitions of English words had at last been declared and the spelling of the English language had become standardised. 

This standardisation helped push the English language towards the Late Modern period and the English language that we all know today.

Share your thoughts on the first English dictionary

Have you ever seen a copy of Cawdrey’s or Johnson’s dictionary?

Do you think the authors of the dictionary should include their own opinions and comments or stick to the facts?

What percentage of a language’s words do you think need to be included in a good dictionary?

Would you find literary quotations useful when looking up a new word?

Next: Late Modern English

Attributions

1. Volume Two of Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language title page. By Samuel Johnson 1709-1784 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
2. Portrait of Samuel Johnson by Joshua Reynolds, 1772, commissioned for Henry Thrale’s Streatham Park gallery. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

I answered a similar question on Linguistics SE, which I will plagiarize in part here:

How etymological research is done has varied through time. In the case of the «New English Dictionary» (the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary), work started on it in 1857. Then:

[I]n January 1859, the Society issued their ‘Proposal for the publication of a New English Dictionary,’ in which the characteristics of the proposed work were explained, and an appeal made to the English and American public to assist in collecting the raw materials for the work, these materials consisting of quotations illustrating the use of English words by all writers of all ages and in all senses, each quotation being made on a uniform plan on a half-sheet of notepaper, that they might in due course be arranged and classified alphabetically and by meanings. This Appeal met with a generous response: some hundreds of volunteers began to read books, make quotations, and send in their slips to ‘sub-editors,’ who volunteered each to take charge of a letter or part of one, and by whom the slips were in tum further arranged, classified, and to some extent used as the basis of definitions and skeleton schemes of the meanings of words in preparation for the Dictionary.
_{An Appeal to the English-Speaking and English-Reading Public to Read Books and Make Extracts for The Philological Society’s New English Dictionary}

One significant contributor to the early OED worth mentioning is William Chester Minor (1834 – 1920). He was insane, but he was also good at doing etymological research. His story, graphic in some parts, can be found here:

What made him so good, so prolific, was his method: Instead of copying quotations willy-nilly, he’d flip through his library and make a word list for each individual book, indexing the location of nearly every word he saw. These catalogues effectively transformed Minor into a living, breathing search engine. He simply had to reach out to the Oxford editors and ask: So, what words do you need help with?

The «Reading Programme» is still used by the OED, although the methodology is different. The books are still read all the same but here’s what happens next according to a freelance researcher for the OED:

I then consult OED Online to determine whether the word or phrase is in the Dictionary: if it is not, I submit it as a ‘not-in’, and if it is, I decide whether its form or context is important enough to warrant its submission. If it does qualify, I enter the information into tagged fields in an electronic file that has been set up in a standard format. When I have finished the reading, I submit the file to Oxford or New York, where the records are incorporated into OED‘s working database for consideration by the editors, along with thousands of paper citation slips, as they proceed through the current revision. Yes, some of my finds are still submitted as paper slips—a reminder of OED‘s long heritage—but, electronic or paper, I can hardly imagine a better job.

The quotations were collected in a machine readable format for the first time in 1989. The 1990 UK Reading Programme captured material electronically. (Note that the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary came out in 1989.)

In addition to this, the OED now utilizes several online databases of texts, such as Early English Books Online, Eighteenth Century Collections Online, and some newspaper databases.

I have access (for now) to several of these paywalled databases through my college.

If you do your own research with databases (many people use the free Google Books), it’s often easy to find antedatings for pages that haven’t been updated for the third edition of the OED. Updates to the OED3 started in 2000 and continue to this day: it’s a huge dictionary and updating takes time.

See also:

• OED: Researching the Language

Although,
as we have seen from the preceding paragraph, there is as yet no
coherent doctrine in English lexicography, its richness and variety
are everywhere admitted and appreciated. Its history is in its way
one of the most remarkable developments in linguistics, and is
therefore worthy of special attention. In the following pages a short
outline of its various phases is given.

A
need for a dictionary or glossary has been felt in the cultural
growth of many civilised peoples at a fairly early period. The
history of dictionary-making for the English language goes as far
back as the Old English period where its first traces are found in
the form of glosses of religious books with interlinear translation
from Latin. Regular bilingual English-Latin dictionaries were already
in existence in the 15th century.

The
unilingual dictionary is a comparatively recent type. The first
unilingual English dictionary, explaining words by English
equivalents, appeared in 1604.
It
was meant to explain difficult words occurring in books. Its title
was “A Table Alphabeticall, containing and teaching the true
writing and understanding of hard usuall
English
words borrowed from the Hebrew, Greeke, Latine or French”. The
little volume of 120
pages
explaining about 3000
words
was compiled by one Robert Cawdrey, a schoolmaster. Other books
followed, each longer than the preceding one. The first attempt at a
dictionary including all the words of the language, not only the
difficult ones, was made by Nathaniel Bailey who in 1721
published
the first edition of his “Universal Etymological English
Dictionary”. He was the first to include pronunciation and
etymology.

Big
explanatory dictionaries were created in France and Italy before they
appeared for the English language. Learned academies on the continent
had been established to preserve the purity of their respective
languages. This was also the purpose of Dr Samuel Johnson’s famous
Dictionary published in 1755.¹
The idea of purity involved a tendency to oppose change, and S.
Johnson’s Dictionary was meant to establish the English language in
its classical form, to preserve it in all its glory as used by J.
Dryden, A. Pope, J. Addison and their contemporaries. In conformity
with the social order of his time, S. Johnson attempted to “fix”
and regulate English. This was the period of much discussion about
the necessity of “purifying” and “fixing” English, and S.
Johnson wrote that every change was undesirable, even a change for
the best. When his work was accomplished, however, he had to admit he
had been wrong and confessed in his preface that “no dictionary of
a living tongue can ever be perfect, since while it is hastening to
publication, some
words
are budding and some falling away”. The most important innovation
of S. Johnson’s Dictionary was the introduction of illustrations of
the meanings of the words “by examples from the best writers»,
as had been done before him in the dictionary of the French Academy.
Since then such illustrations have become a “sine qua non” in
lexicography; S. Johnson, however, only mentioned the authors and
never gave any specific references for his quotations. Most probably
he reproduced some of his quotations from memory, not always very
exactly, which would have been unthinkable in modern lexicology. The
definitions he gave were often very ingenious. He was called “a
skilful definer”,
but sometimes he preferred to give way to sarcasm or humour and did
not hesitate to be partial in his definitions. The epithet he gave to
lexicographer,
for
instance, is famous even in our time: a
lexicographer was
‘a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge …’.
The
dictionary dealt with separate words only, almost no set expressions
were entered. Pronunciation was not marked, because S. Johnson was
keenly aware of the wide variety of the English pronunciation and
thought it impossible to set up a standard there; he paid attention
only to those aspects of vocabulary where he believed he could
improve linguistic usage. S. Johnson’s influence was tremendous. He
remained the unquestionable authority on style and diction for more
than 75
years.
The result was a lofty bookish style which received the name of
“Johnsonian” or “Johnsonese”.

As
to pronunciation, attention was turned to it somewhat later. A
pronouncing dictionary that must be mentioned first was published in
1780
by
Thomas Sheridan, grandfather of the great dramatist. In 1791
appeared
“The Critical Pronouncing Dictionary and Expositor of the English
Language” by John Walker, an actor. The vogue of this second
dictionary was very great, and in later publications Walker’s
pronunciations were inserted into S. Johnson’s text —
a
further step to a unilingual dictionary in its present-day form.

The
Golden Age of English lexicography began in the last quarter of the
19th century when the English Philological Society started work on
compiling what is now known as “The Oxford English Dictionary”
(OED), but was originally named “New English Dictionary on
Historical Principles”. It is still occasionally referred to as
NED.

The
purpose of this monumental work is to trace the development of
English words from their form in Old English, and if they were not
found in Old English, to show when they were introduced into the
language, and also to show the development of each meaning and its
historical relation to other meanings of the same word. For words and
meanings which have become obsolete the date of the latest occurrence
is given. All this is done by means of dated quotations ranging from
the oldest to recent appearances of the words in question. The
English of G. Chaucer, of the “Bible” and of W. Shakespeare is
given as much attention as that of the most modern authors. The
dictionary includes spellings, pronunciations and detailed
etymologies. The completion of the work required more than 75
years.
The result is a kind of encyclopaedia of language used not only for
reference purposes but also as a basis for lexicological research.

The
lexicographic concept here is very different from the prescriptive
tradition of Dr S. Johnson: the lexicographer is the objective
recorder of the language. The purpose of OED, as stated by its
editors, has nothing to do with prescription or proscription of any
kind.

The
conception of this new type of dictionary was born in a discussion at
the English Philological Society. It was suggested by Frederick
Furnivall, later its second titular editor, to Richard Trench, the
author of the first book on lexicology of the English language.
Richard Trench read before the society his paper “On Some
Deficiencies in our English Dictionaries», and that was how the
big enterprise was started. At once the Philological Society set to
work to gather the material, volunteers offered to help by collecting
quotations. Dictionary-making became a sort of national enterprise. A
special committee prepared a list of books to be read and assigned
them to the volunteers, sending them also special standard slips for
quotations. By 1881
the
number of readers was 800,
and
they sent in many thousands of slips. The tremendous amount of work
done by these volunteers testifies to the keen interest the English
take in their language.

The
first part of the Dictionary appeared in 1884
and
the last in 1928.
Later
it was issued in twelve volumes and in order to accommodate new words
a three volume Supplement was issued in 1933.
These
volumes were revised in the seventies. Nearly all the material of the
original Supplement was retained and a large body of the most recent
accessions to the English language added.

The
principles, structure and scope of “The Oxford English Dictionary»,
its merits and demerits are discussed in the most comprehensive
treaty by L.V. Malakhovsky. Its prestige is enormous. It is
considered superior to corresponding major dictionaries for other
languages. The Oxford University Press published different abridged
versions. “The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical
Principles” formerly appeared in two volumes, now printed on
thinner paper it is bound in one volume of 2,538
pages.
It differs from the complete edition in that it contains a smaller
number of quotations. It keeps to all the main principles of
historical presentation and covers not only the current literary and
colloquial English but also its previous stages. Words are defined
and illustrated with key quotations.

“The
Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English” was first published
in 1911,
i.e.
before the work on the main version was completed. It is not a
historical dictionary but one of current usage. A still shorter form
is “The Pocket Oxford Dictionary”.

Another
big dictionary, also created by joined effort of enthusiasts, is
Joseph Wright’s “English Dialect Dictionary”. Before this
dictionary could be started upon, a thorough study of English
dialects had to be completed. With this aim in view W.W. Skeat,
famous for his “Etymological English Dictionary” founded the
English Dialect Society as far back as 1873.
Dialects
are of great importance for the historical study of the language. In
the 19th century they were very pronounced though now they are almost
disappearing. The Society existed till
1896
and
issued 80
publications,
mostly monographs.

Curiously
enough, the first American dictionary of the English language was
compiled by a man whose name was also Samuel Johnson. Samuel Johnson
Jr., a Connecticut schoolmaster, published in 1798
a
small book entitled “A School Dictionary”. This book was followed
in 1800
by
another dictionary by the same author, which showed already some
signs of Americanisation. It included, for instance, words like
tomahawk
and
wampum,
borrowed
into English from the Indian languages.
It was Noah Webster, universally considered to be the father of
American
lexicography, who emphatically broke away from English idiom, and
embodied in his book the specifically American usage of his time.
His great work, “The American Dictionary of the English Language»,
appeared
in two volumes in 1828
and
later sustained numerous revised and enlarged editions. In many
respects N.
Webster
follows the lead of Dr S. Johnson (the British lexicographer). But he
has also improved and corrected many of S. Johnson’s etymologies
and his definitions are often more exact. N.
Webster
attempted to simplify the spelling and pronunciation that were
current in the USA of the period. He devoted many years to the
collection of words and the preparation of more accurate definitions.

N.
Webster
realised the importance of language for the development of a nation,
and devoted his energy to giving the American English the status of
an independent language, distinct from British English. At that time
the idea was progressive as it helped the unification of separate
states into one federation. The tendency became reactionary later on,
when some modern linguists like H. Mencken shaped it into the theory
of a separate American language, not only different from British
English, but surpassing it in efficiency and therefore deserving to
dominate and supersede all the languages of the world. Even if we
keep within purely linguistic or purely lexical concepts, we shall
readily see that the difference is not so great as to warrant
American English the rank of a separate language, not a variant of
English (see p. 265).

The
set of morphemes is the same. Some words have acquired a new meaning
on American soil and this meaning has or has not penetrated into
British English. Other words kept their earlier meanings that are
obsolete and not used in Great Britain. As civilisation progressed
different names were given to new inventions on either side of the
Atlantic. Words were borrowed from different Indian languages and
from Spanish. All these had to be recorded in a dictionary and so
accounted for the existence of specific American lexicography. The
world of today with its ever-growing efficiency and intensity of
communication and personal contacts, with its press, radio and
television creates conditions which tend to foster not an isolation
of dialects and variants but, on the contrary, their mutual
penetration and integration.

Later
on, the title “International Dictionary of the English Language”
was adopted, and in the latest edition not Americanisms but words not
used in America (Britishisms) are marked off.

N.
Webster’s
dictionary enjoyed great popularity from its first editions. This
popularity was due not only to the accuracy and clarity of
definitions but also to the richness of additional information of
encyclopaedic

character,
which had become a tradition in American lexicography. As a
dictionary N.
Webster’s
book aims to treat the entire vocabulary of the language providing
definitions, pronunciation and etymology. As an encyclopaedia it
gives explanations about things named, including scientific and
technical subjects. It does so more concisely than a full-scale
encyclopaedia, but it is worthy of note that the definitions are as a
rule up-to-date and rigorous scientifically.

Soon
after N.
Webster’s
death two printers and booksellers of Massachusetts,
George and Charles Merriam, secured the rights of his dictionary from
his family and started the publication of revised single volume
editions under the name “Merriam-Webster”. The staff working for
the modern editions is a big institution numbering hundreds of
specialists in different branches of human activity.

It
is important to note that the name “Webster” may be attached for
publicity’s sake by anyone to any dictionary. Many publishers
concerned with their profits have taken this opportunity to issue
dictionaries called “Webster’s”. Some of the books so named are
cheaply-made reprints of old editions, others are said to be entirely
new works. The practice of advertising by coupling N.
Webster’s
name to a dictionary which has no connection with him, continues up
to the present day.

A
complete revision of N.
Webster’s
dictionary is achieved with a certain degree of regularity. The
recent “Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the
English Language” has called forth much comment, both favourable
and unfavourable. It has been greatly changed as compared with the
previous edition, in word selection as well as in other matters. The
emphasis is on the present-day state of the language. The number of
illustrative quotations is increased. To accommodate the great number
of new words and meanings without increasing the bulk of the volume,
the editors excluded much encyclopaedic material.

The
other great American dictionaries are the “Century Dictionary»,
first completed in 1891;
“Funk
and Wagnalls New Standard Dictionary», first completed in 1895;
the
“Random House Dictionary of the English Language», completed
in 1967;
“The
Heritage Illustrated Dictionary of the English Language», first
published in 1969,
and
C.L. Barnhart’s et al. “The World Book Dictionary” presenting a
synchronic review of the language in the 20th century. The first
three continue to appear in variously named subsequent editions
including abridged versions. Many small handy popular dictionaries
for office, school and home use are prepared to meet the demand in
reference books on spelling, pronunciation, meaning and usage.

An
adequate idea of the dictionaries cannot be formed from a mere
description and it is no substitute for actually using them. To
conclude we would like to mention that for a specialist in
linguistics and a teacher of foreign languages systematic work with a
good dictionary in conjunction with his reading is an absolute
necessity.

Lexicography
is an important branch of linguistics which covers the theory and
practice of compiling dictionaries.

The
history of lexicography goes back to Old
English where its first traces are
found in the form of glosses of religious books with interlinear
translation from Latin. Regular bilingual English-Latin
dictionaries already existed in the 15th
century.

The
first unilingual English dictionary, explaining words appeared in
1604. It was «A table
alphabetical, containing and teaching the true writing and
understanding of hard usual English words borrowed from the Hebrew,
Greece, Latin or French». This dictionary of 120 pages
explaining about 3000 words was compiled by Robert
Cawdrey, a schoolmaster. Robert
Cawdrey’s Table Alphabetical was the first single-language
English dictionary ever published.

Etymological
Dictionary

Nathaniel
Bailey published the first edition of
Universal Etymological English
Dictionary
in 1721. It was the first
to include pronunciation and etymology. It was a little over 900
pages long. In compiling his dictionary, Bailey borrowed greatly from
John Kersey’s Dictionarium Anglo-Britannicum (1706), which in turn
drew from the later editions of Edward Phillips’s The New World of
English Words. Like Kersey’s dictionary, Bailey’s dictionary was one
of the first monolingual English dictionaries to focus on defining
words in common usage, rather than just difficult words.

Although
Bailey put the word «etymological» in his title, he gives
definitions for many words without also trying to give the word’s
etymology. A very high percentage of the etymologies he does give are
consistent with what’s in today’s English dictionaries.

In
1727, Bailey published a supplementary volume entitled The Universal
Etymological English Dictionary, Volume II. Volume II, almost 900
pages, has some duplication or overlap with the primary volume, but
mostly consists of extra words of lesser circulation.

Explanatory
dictionary

The
first big explanatory
dictionary «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: In 2
vols.» was complied by Dr Samuel
Johnson and published in 1755.

The
most important innovation
of S. Johnson’s Dictionary was the introduction of illustrations of
the meanings of the words by examples
from the best writers (around 114,000
quotations). Pronunciation
was not marked,
because S. Johnson was sure of the wide variety
of the English pronunciation and
thought it was impossible to set up a
standard there. He paid attention only to
those aspects of vocabulary where he believed he could improve
linguistic usage. S. Johnson’s
influence was tremendous. He remained the unquestionable authority
for more than 75 years. When it came out the book was huge, not just
in scope but also in size. Johnson himself pronounced the book “Vasta
mole superbus” (“Proud in its great bulk”).

The
completion of the work required more than 75 years. The first part of
the dictionary appeared in 1884 and the last in 1928. Later it was
issued in twelve volumes
in order to hold new words
a three volume Supplement was issued in 1933.

The
Concise Oxford Dictionary of current
English was first published in 1911. It is not a historical
dictionary but of current usage. A still shorter form is The
Pocket Oxford Dictionary. The new
enlarged version of OED was issued in 22 volumes 1994.

With
descriptions for approximately 750,000 words, the Oxford English
Dictionary is the world’s most comprehensive single-language print
dictionary according to the Guiness
Book of World Records.Two Russian
borrowings glasnost
and perestroika
were included in it. This publication was followed by a two- volume
Supplement to hold new words.

English
Dialect Dictionary

Another
big dictionary is Joseph Wright’s
«English Dialect Dictionary».
Before this dictionary could be started upon, a
thorough study of English dialects had to
be completed. The English Dialect Dictionary, being the complete
vocabulary of all dialect words still in use, or known to have been
in use during the last two hundred years; founded on the publications
of the English Dialect Society and on a large amount of material
never before printed was published by Oxford University Press in 6
volumes between 1898 and 1905. Its compilation and printing was
funded privately by Joseph Wright, a self-taught philologist at the
University of Oxford.

Due
to the scale of the work, 70,000 entries, and the period in which the
information was gathered, it is regarded as a standard work in the
historical study of dialect. Wright marked annotations and
corrections in a cut-up and rebound copy of the first edition; this
copy is among Wright’s papers in the Bodleian Library at the
University of Oxford.

Pronouncing
dictionary

The
first pronouncing dictionary was published in 1780 by Thomas
Sheridan, an Irish stage actor,
educator and a major proponent of the elocution movement. He is the
grandfather of the great dramatist. The title page of the dictionary
says «A complete dictionary of the English language with regard
to sound and meaning. One main object of which is to establish a
plain and permanent standard of pronunciation to which is prefixed a
prosodial grammar.»

In
1791 there appeared The Critical
Pronouncing Dictionary and Expositor of the English Language
by John Walker, an actor.

Oxford
English Dictionary

The
Golden Age of English lexicography
began in the last quarter of the 19th century when the English
Philological Society started work on compiling The
Oxford English Dictionary (OED) which
was originally named New English
Dictionary on Historical Principles
(NED). It is still referred to as either OED or NED.

The
objective of
this dictionary was and still is to trace the
development of English words from their
form in Old English.
If the word was not found
in Old English, it was shown when
it was introduced into the language. For words and meanings which
have become obsolete the date of the latest
occurrence is provided. The dictionary
includes spellings,
pronunciations and detailed etymologies.

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