The ''Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources'' ("DMLBS") is a lexicon of

Medieval Latin Medieval Latin was the form of Literary Latin used in Roman Catholic Western Europe during the Middle Ages. In this region it served as the primary written language, though local languages were also written to varying degrees. Latin functioned ...

published by the

British Academy The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences. It was established in 1902 and received its royal charter in the same year. It is now a fellowship of more than 1,000 leading scholars span ...

. The dictionary is not founded upon any earlier dictionary, but derives from original research. After decades of preparatory work, work on the dictionary itself was begun in 1965, and it was published in fascicules between 1975 and 2013. In 2016 the complete work was put online. A consolidated reprint in three volumes was published in 2018.

History

In 1913, Robert Whitwell, a prolific contributor to the

Oxford English Dictionary The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a com ...

, petitioned the

to use the imminent International Congress of Historical Studies to propose a replacement for the standard dictionary of medieval Latin,

Du Cange Charles du Fresne, sieur du Cange (; December 18, 1610 in Amiens – October 23, 1688 in Paris, aged 77), also known simply as Charles Dufresne, was a distinguished French philologist and historian of the Middle Ages and Byzantium. Life Educate ...

's ''Glossarium'' (1678). Whitwell's idea was taken up in 1920 by the new International Union of Academies, which decided in 1924 that member academies should produce dictionaries based on those medieval Latin texts produced in geographic areas corresponding to their respective present-day territories, whilst also furnishing the material for an international ''Novum Glossarium''. To this end, the British Academy appointed two committees to direct the collection of quotations, one covering the sixth to eleventh centuries for the ''Novum Glossarium'' and the other covering

1066 1066 (Roman numerals, MLXVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Julian calendar. Events Worldwide * March 20 – Halley's Comet reaches perihelion. Its appearance is subsequently recorded in the Bayeux Tapestry. Asia * ''un ...

to 1600 for a dictionary of "late medieval British Latin". By 1932 the Academy felt that they could usefully publish the first fruits of the project, which appeared in 1934 as the ''Medieval Latin Word-List from British and Irish Sources'', prepared by J. H. Baxter and Charles Johnson. A ''Revised Word-List'' prepared by

Ronald Latham Ronald Edward Latham (1907–1992) was an English classicist best known for his translation of ''On the Nature of the Universe'' by Lucretius. He also translated ''The Travels of Marco Polo'' and Bede's 'Ecclesiastical History of the English Peop ...

appeared in 1965.

Print publication history

The DMLBS was published in printed fascicules, from 1975 to 2013, by

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...

: * I: A–B (R. E. Latham), 17 April 1975, * II: C (R. E. Latham), 14 May 1981, * III: D–E (R. E. Latham, D. R. Howlett, et al.), 26 June 1986, * IV: F–G–H (D. R. Howlett, A. H. Powell, et al.), 14 December 1989, * V: I–J–K–L (D. R. Howlett), 21 August 1997, * VI: M (D. R. Howlett, J. Blundell, et al.), 3 January 2002, * VII: N (D. R. Howlett), 30 May 2002, * VIII: O (D. R. Howlett), 29 January 2004, * IX: P–Pel (D. R. Howlett), 24 November 2005, * X: Pel–Phi (D. R. Howlett), 18 January 2007, * XI: Phi–Pos (D. R. Howlett), 13 December 2007, * XII: Pos–Pro (D. R. Howlett), 26 March 2009, * XIII: Pro–Reg (D. R. Howlett), 28 October 2010, * XIV: Reg–Sal (D. R. Howlett), 8 December 2011, * XV: Sal–Sol (D. R. Howlett, R. K. Ashdowne), 26 July 2012, * XVI: Sol–Syr (R. K. Ashdowne, D. R. Howlett), 19 February 2013, * XVII: Syr–Z (R. K. Ashdowne), 19 December 2013, A binding case for the first five fascicules was supplied with Fascicule V, forming a first volume (A–L). However, no further binding cases were issued. In 2018 a three-volume consolidated edition was published incorporating additions and corrections, including those previously published, into the text.

Publication online

In 2016 the whole DMLBS was published online, under licence from the British Academy. The Logeion version is free and is searchable by headword only. The Brepols version, available by subscription, is more fully searchable.Brepol''i''s online versionannouncement
.

References

External links

Logeion
has a complete, free copy of ''Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources'' ("DMLBS"), searchable by headword.
Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources
project website
Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources
project blog
Quisquiliae
notes from an Assistant Editor on the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources 1975 non-fiction books Oxford dictionaries Latin dictionaries Works about the Middle Ages Research projects British Academy 20th-century Latin books

History

Print publication history

Publication online

See also

References

Further reading

External links