Robert Scott (26 January 1811 – 2 December 1887) was a British academic

philologist Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as ...

and

Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Britai ...

priest.

Biography

Scott was born on 26 January 1811 in

Bondleigh Bondleigh is a village and civil parish in the West Devon district of Devon, England, on the River Taw, north of North Tawton. According to the 2011 census it had a population of 167. The parish church, is dedicated to Saint James and is ...

, Devon, England. He was educated at St Bees School in Cumbria, and Shrewsbury School in Shropshire. He studied classics at Christ Church, Oxford, graduating with a

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...

(BA) degree in 1833. Scott was ordained in 1835 and held the college living of Duloe, Cornwall, from 1845 to 1850. He was a prebendary of Exeter Cathedral from 1845 to 1866 and rector of South Luffenham, Rutland, from 1850 to 1854 when he was elected Master of Balliol College, Oxford. He served as Dean Ireland's Professor of the Exegesis of Holy Scripture at Oxford from 1861 to 1870 and as the Dean of Rochester from 1870 until his death in 1887. Scott is best known as the co-editor (with his colleague Henry Liddell) of '' A Greek-English Lexicon'', the standard dictionary of the classical

Greek language Greek ( el, label= Modern Greek, Ελληνικά, Elliniká, ; grc, Ἑλληνική, Hellēnikḗ) is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece, Cyprus, southern Italy (Calabria and Salento), southe ...

. According to the 1925 edition of the ''Lexicon'', the project was originally proposed to Scott by the London bookseller and publisher David Alphonso Talboys; it was published by the

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 book ...

. In 1872, Scott was taken with Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky" poem published the year before, and he wrote the first known German translation of the piece. He engaged Carroll in an exchange of letters wherein he jocularly claimed his German version, called "Der Jammerwoch", was the original, with Carroll's being the translation.

External links

*
Lexicon text at Perseus project
– includes basic biographical information about Scott from the 1925 edition of the ''Lexicon''
Biographical index to Benjamin Jowett papers
– brief biography of Scott
Balliol College Portraits Collection
– includes a portrait of Scott *

– elucidates Scott's 2/1872 "Jammerwoch" translation

– details Scott's epistolary exchange with Charles Dodgson, a.k.a. Lewis Carroll, and links to the "Jammerwoch" translation 1811 births 1887 deaths English classical scholars English lexicographers Deans of Rochester People educated at St Bees School Alumni of Christ Church, Oxford Fellows of Balliol College, Oxford Masters of Balliol College, Oxford Dean Ireland's Professors of the Exegesis of Holy Scripture English philologists Scholars of Greek language Exeter Cathedral Clergy from Exeter 19th-century lexicographers Writers from Exeter {{England-academic-bio-stub