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DICTIONARY. 



DICTIONARY. 



611 



explanation, many examples may be found of its employment in a 

 more extended MM*. Son* itirltnnarftt prnfsss to haw more pecu- 

 liarly ! r tl.fr object the explanation or interpretation <{ phrases; 

 uoh, for example, as the well-known volume on the Latin language 

 entitled Ptmseologia flemenlii.' by William Robertson, 8\v. 

 18S1 ; and Tarvcrs ' Phraseological Dictionary,' in French and Kutli 

 1850. Some dictionaries and vocabularies apply only to some particular 

 author or work ; such a* I Uinm' Lexicons or Concordances, as they 

 are called, of Homer and Pindar, since combined into the ' Lexicon 

 Horoerieo-Pindaricmii,' the ' Lexicon Ciceronian um ' of Marina Nixo- 

 liua, Ac. Such dictionari**, when well compiled, are among the most 

 valuable aid* the student can avail himself of. Nor are they of um 

 only in studying the author* of antiquity ; the works of mine mod. -i n 

 writer* hare been very ably illustrated in this way, as, for instance, 

 by Archdeacon Kara* in his glossary to 8haks]>ere and his Contem- 

 poraries, 4to, London, 1822. Even a mere verbal index, with little .or 

 no explanation of the meanings of the words, is often much more 

 useful than a professedly interpreting dictionary, by merely bringing 

 together or pointing out by reference the different passages in which 

 each word is used, so that they may be compared with one another. 

 Booh mere indexes as those attached to the ' Delphin Classic*' are of 

 great value in this way, in addition to their proper use of enabling 

 any passage to be found of which even a single word is recollected. 

 Few of our English classics have been illustrated by such complete 

 verbal indexes ; there is one to ' Milton's Paradise Lost,' 1 2ino, London, 

 1741. AyBcough's ' Index to Shakspere' U only an index to the " re- 

 markable " passages and words ; and although its professed design is 

 " to point out the different meaning* to which the words are applied," 

 it i* not very successfully compiled for that purpose. Mrs. Cowden 

 Clarke's Concordance is far more complete. Indexes of this description 

 serve in fact the same purpose with Concordances, although that term 

 has been for the most part confined to works relating to the Scriptures. 

 [CONCORDANCE.] Some works entitled dictionaries, indeed, compre- 

 hend concordances more or less complete; as, for instance, Schleusner's 

 ' Nor urn Lexicon Graco-Latinum in Novum Testomentum,' and the 

 Ionic lexicon of Schweigha'user, which is a sort of concordance to 

 Herodotus, and that to Polybius by the same scholar. 



Some of these dictionaries to particular authors, or works, have ex- 

 clusively or ]irinciiIly in view the illustration of the style of the 

 author, or his use of {articular words. One of the best of these is 

 Ernesti 1 * ' Index Latinitatis Philologico-Criticus ' to Cicero. This 

 work in fact, although styled merely an index, is much more a dic- 

 tionary of interpretation and commentary than the lexicon just 

 mentioned of Nizolius, which, however, is much the more minute and 

 extensive index of the two. The instance may serve to show with 

 what latitude the two titles are applied. And the title of index, it 

 may be added, has been sometimes given to works which ore not 

 really indexes in any respect, but simply dictionaries or vocabularies. 

 We may mention as an example, ' Olai Vereli Index Lingiuc Veteri* 

 Scytho-Scandicte, rive Gothiac, opera Olai Kudbeckii editus,' fol. 

 Upsalss, 1691, which is merely a vocabulary of the Gothic. Dic- 

 tionaries of languages have also been published under many other 

 titles. A thesaurus, or treasury, is a very common title of such a 

 book. Thus Kabcr's Latin dictionary is styled ' Thesaurus Erudition!* 

 SchoUstictc,' and H. Stephen*' Greek lexicon is entitled ' Thesaurus 

 Gracse Lingua.-.' Edward Philips entitles his English dictionary a 



World of Words.' In some cases an attempt has been made by 

 means of a dictionary or index, not only to point out the writer's use 

 of particular words, or their meaning in particular passages of his 

 works, but also to give an abstract of his text. This has been done in 

 the index to Hippocrates, by Focsius, entitled ' CEconomia Hippocratis 

 Alphabet! serie distincta, in qua Dictionum apud Hippocratem omnium, 

 pncscrtim obscuriorum, usus explicatur, et velut ex ompUfisimo Penu 

 depromitur, ita ut Lexicon Hippocrateum merito dici possit,' foL 

 Francf. 1688. In 1677, Klisha Cole published in London, m 8vo, ' An 

 English Dictionary; explaining the difficult terms that are u^.l in 

 Divinity, Husbandry, Physick, Philosophy, Law, Navigation, Mathe- 

 matics, and other Arts and Sciences.' Of dictionaries of words also, 

 some are dictionaries of etymologies, some of the quantities of syllable* 

 (as the common Latin ' Gradus ad Parnassian,' and Mortll's ' Thesaurus 

 Or*9c0 Poeaeos, rive Lexicon Gneco-Prosodiacum,' impr..v, .1 .m.l . u 

 Urged by Maltby); some of terminations (as in Englixh, Walker's 



Rhyming Dictionary '), and Hoogeveen's ' Dictionarium Analogic-urn 

 Lingua Grtccc.' Home dictionaries of the oriental tongues and of the 

 Greek tongue exhibit the words arranged according to their supposed 

 roots; and some Latin dictionaries have also been constructed UJK.H 

 this plan. Of professed dictionaries of derivations one of the most 

 elaborate, though it is far from being a correct or philosophical work, 



i the ' Entymologicon Lingiuc Latinm ' of G. J. Vossius. Others are 

 the ' Dictionoaire Etymologique do la Longue Francaiso,' of Menage ; 

 the ' Originea de U Languc Italienne,' of the same author ; the 



Etymologicon Lingua: Anglicame, of Stephen Skinner, fol. 1671 

 and the ' Etymologicon Anglieanum ' of Francis Junius, fol., Oxon 

 1743. A very ambitious attempt has been made by Mr. Whiter 

 in his 'Etymologicon Magnum, or Universal Etymological Dictionary 

 on a new plan/ 8 vols. 4to., Camb. 18001822, to construct a 

 dictionary of the elements of all human language. Mr. Booth, in hi* 

 ' Analytkal Dictionary of the English Language,' has set an example of 



perhaps the happiest mode in which an account of words can be given 

 according to their etymologies or affinities. By making each radical 

 term the text of a short easay, in the course of which the history of all 

 it* derived and connected terms is tnced and illustrated by quotations, 

 reference* to manners and customs, and anecdotes of various kind*, the 

 writer ha* rendered In- dictionary a* entertaining as it is instructive, 

 and adapted it not only for occasional consultation but for continuous 

 reading. Dr. Chevenix Trench has likewise made valuable additions in 

 this direction. 



Any account of the dictionaries of particular tongues would be out 

 of place here. There is a ' Table Alphabc'tique des Dictionnaires,' by 

 Durey de Noinrille, published in 1758, which however is asserted to be 

 v.-ry incomplete, even for that time. A very elaborate dissert-ition on 

 lexicon* and glossaries in general, and on those of the Greek language 

 in particular, by P. J. Maussacus, is inserted in most of the editions of 

 the Greek lexicon of Horpocration, entitled ' Lexicon Deoem Orato- 

 rum ;' and the same subject has also been treated by several other 

 writers who are enumerated in MorhofTs ' Polyhistor,' lib. iv. cap. 7. 

 In the portion of MorhofTs third book, from chapter 4th to chapter 

 9th inclusive (vol. i. pp. 743-830, edit. 1747), is given an account of the 

 principal dictionaries of the modern European tongues, of the oriental 

 tongues, of the Greek, and of the Latin tongues. See also De Bure's 

 ' Bibliographic Instructive,' vol. iii., p. 1-86. 



In some dictionaries the word* are explained in the same language 

 to which they belong ; in many others the words of one language are 

 interpreted by corresponding words in another language. In some the 

 interpretation or translation is into several languages ; as, for instance, 

 in Minsheu's ' Dictionary of Eleven Languages, namely, English, Welsh, 

 German, Dutch, French, Italian, Sjianish, Portuguese, Latin, Greek, 

 and Hebrew,' fol. London, 1617 : and in a dictionary printed at St. 

 Petersburg in 3 vols. 4to., in 17S5, in which the words and phrases are 

 given in French, German, Russian, and Latin. 



Although, as Maussacus in his Critical Dissertation just noticed has 

 taken great pains to prove, book* both of y\iia<rai, or unusual words, 

 and of Affii, or idioms, are frequently referred to or mentioned by the 

 Greek and Latin grammarians and other writers, it does not clearly 

 appear that all of these were what we should now call dictionaries, that 

 is to say, were collections of vocables and phrases alphabetically arranged. 

 The oldest extant Greek lexicographer is Appollonius the Soph tut, 

 a contemporary of Augustus ; his work entitled A'{u 'O/aifutiu, or 

 ' Homeric Words," though much interpolated, i* very useful. All 

 the other original Greek lexicon* and glossaries we hare, such as 

 the ' Onomasticon ' (or collection of Synonyms) of Julius Pollux, the 

 lexicons of Suidas, Harpocration, and Hesychius, and the ' Ktymologicon 

 Magnum,' sometimes attributed to Marcus Musurus, although of the 

 authors of some of them the exact age is disputed, were undoubt- 

 edly compiled subsequent, and most of them probably long subse- 

 quent to the commencement of the Christian era. It is supposed, 

 indeed, that they were founded upon older compilations of the 

 same kind ; but of the form of those lost works we know nothing. 

 It may be reasonably doubted if either the Greek* or Romans 

 were in the habit of making use of dictionaries in studying a 

 foreign language or dialect, as has been the general practice in 

 modern times. They would seem rather to hare uniformly followed 

 what may be called the natural method of learning the language from 

 conversation with those who spoke it, being the method by whi 

 all learn the language we acquire both most easily and most perfri t]y. 

 our mother tongue, and that by which alone a real knowledge and 

 command of any language can be acquired. Although, however, the 

 utility of a general dictionary of a language as an instrument cither 

 for teaching the language to youth in schools, or for enabling a student 

 to master it in any circumstances, may well be questioned, there ore 

 obvious considerations which make it desirable that we should possess 

 such dictionaries of all languages. When a dictionary of a language 

 professes to be more than a mere vocabulary, it is usual for it to contain 

 along with the interpretation or explanation of the meaning of each 

 word, some account of its etymology or derivation, and also of 

 its grammatical usage. Kxcrpt when the dictionary is exclu 

 etymological, perhaps all that ought to be attempted in regard to 

 the foreign extraction of words is to note the language from which 

 each may be supposed to have been immediately borrowed, lint 

 merely to append the supposed original word of the foreign language, 

 as is generally done, conveys little valuable information in any case, 

 and U very apt to lead to misconception. If it is desired to exhibit 

 the nature of the change which the forms of the word* have ini'l. i 

 gone in passing from the one tongue to the other, this will be better 

 done by a short statement on the Bubject once for all, in which the 

 several mode* and incidents of the transference should be systemati- 

 cally arranged and illustrated by examples, and the prim-i|>li- of . :i.-h 

 explained. It would be fully of as much importance limvev. T that in 

 every dictionary of a language the connection of each word with other 

 words in the same language, or the native root from which each has 

 sprung, should be distinctly marked whenever it i* not obvious. This 

 reference of each word to the pro|>er family to which it belong* con- 

 tributes more to make its meaning clear and to (mint out iU correct 

 use than any definition can do. And such a notice of the root of the 

 word would naturally leail t<>. :md -lionld be followed by, as precise a 

 statement as possible of its primitive and most simple meaning ; after 



