Historical dictionary
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A historical dictionary or dictionary on historical principles is a
dictionary A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically (or by radical and stroke for ideographic languages), which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologies ...
which deals not only with the latterday meanings of words but also the historical development of their forms and meanings. It may also describe the vocabulary of an earlier stage of a language's development without covering present-day usage at all. A historical dictionary is primarily of interest to scholars of language, but may also be used as a general dictionary.


Features

Typical features of a historical dictionary are: * Senses of words listed in the order they were first used, allowing the development of meaning over time to be seen * Comprehensive
etymological Etymology ()The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p. 633 "Etymology /ˌɛtɪˈmɒlədʒi/ the study of the class in words and the way their meanings have changed throughout time". is the study of the history of the form of words and ...
information, often directly referencing academic research on word history * Use of illustrative quotations, complete with citations of their sources, providing references and proof of a word's actual existence and use in a given time period * Dates of first use (and, for obsolete usages, last use) with each word and each sense of each word (if there are quotations in the dictionary, the first quotation is usually the very first example which is known) However, not all dictionaries which are called 'historical' have all of these features. For example, the ''
Shorter Oxford English Dictionary The ''Shorter Oxford English Dictionary'' (''SOED'') is an English language dictionary published by the Oxford University Press. The SOED is a two-volume abridgement of the twenty-volume ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED''). Print editions ...
'' includes only minimal quotations, with most entries having only an approximate date of first use, and the ''
Webster's New International Dictionary ''Webster's Dictionary'' is any of the English language dictionaries edited in the early 19th century by American lexicographer Noah Webster (1758–1843), as well as numerous related or unrelated dictionaries that have adopted the Webster's n ...
'' (which, though it does not market itself as historical, is founded on historical principles) features only dates of first use and does not order its senses chronologically.


History

For some languages, like
Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
and
Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
, the historical dictionary (in the sense of a word-list explaining the meanings of words that were obsolete at the time of their compilation) was the first form of dictionary developed; though not being scholarly historical dictionaries in the modern sense, they did give a sense of semantic change over time. Early modern European dictionaries also often included a significant historical element, without being fully historical in form; for instance, Samuel Johnson's ''Dictionary of the English Language'' (1755) included quotations from admired writers as well as some words that were obsolete or obsolescent by the mid 18th century. Modern historical principles emerged with the publication of John Jamieson's ''Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language'' (1808). Like modern historical dictionaries, Jamieson attempted to find the earliest use of each word, and printed quotations in chronological order demonstrating the changes which had occurred to that word throughout history. In 1812 the German classicist
Franz Passow Franz Ludwig Carl Friedrich Passow (20 September 1786 – 11 March 1833) was a German classical scholar and lexicographer. Biography He was born at Ludwigslust in the Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. In 1807 he was appointed to the professorship of ...
laid out his plan for a comprehensive dictionary of the Greek language which would 'set out ..the life story of each single word in a conveniently ordered overviews', which was completed as the ''Handwörterbuch der griechischen Sprache'' in 1824. This idea was transmitted to the English-speaking world through the work of Liddell and Scott on their '' Greek–English Lexicon'' (1843), based on a translation of Passow's work into English. However, it was not until the beginning of the ''
Deutsches Wörterbuch The ''Deutsches Wörterbuch'' (; "The German Dictionary"), abbreviated ''DWB'', is the largest and most comprehensive dictionary of the German language in existence.Brothers Grimm The Brothers Grimm ( or ), Jacob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm (1786–1859), were a brother duo of German academics, philologists, cultural researchers, lexicographers, and authors who together collected and published folklore. They are among the ...
in 1838 that a historical dictionary of a modern language was attempted. Throughout the later nineteenth century numerous historical dictionary projects were started for the various languages of Europe. The main historical dictionary of English, 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 ...
'', was initiated in 1857 and was completed in 1928. Recently the availability of historical text corpora and other large text databases such as digital newspaper archives have begun to influence historical dictionaries. The ''
Trésor de la langue française The ''Trésor de la langue française'' (''TLF'', subtitled ''Dictionnaire de la langue du XIXe et du XXe siècle (1789–1960)'') is a 16-volume dictionary of 19th- and 20th-century French published by the ''Centre de Recherche pour un Trésor ...
'' was the first historical dictionary to be based mainly on a computerized corpus. Most recent historical dictionaries and historical dictionary revision projects have been based on a mixture of quotations taken down by hand and texts from corpora.


Compilation

Because of their size and scope, the compilation of historical dictionaries takes significantly longer than the compilation of general dictionaries. This is often exacerbated by the scholarly nature and limited audience for the works, meaning that the budget is often limited; historical dictionary projects often survive on a grant-to-grant basis, seeking new funding for each new section of the work. Some historical dictionaries, such as Jonathan Lighter's ''
Historical Dictionary of American Slang The ''Historical Dictionary of American Slang'', often abbreviated ''HDAS'', is a dictionary of American slang. The first two volumes, ''Volume 1, A – G'' (1994), and ''Volume 2, H – O'' (1997), were published by Random House, and the work th ...
'', have proven to be so expensive for their publishers that they have ended production before the dictionary was completed. Traditionally historical dictionaries were produced by employing a large number of readers to read and excerpt from historical texts into individual pieces of paper, which were then collated into alphabetical order and referred to during the compilation of the relevant entry. The ''Oxford English Dictionary'', for example, established a reading programme at its foundation which continues to this day. The advent of computerized
full-text search In text retrieval, full-text search refers to techniques for searching a single computer-stored document or a collection in a full-text database. Full-text search is distinguished from searches based on metadata or on parts of the original texts ...
databases and techniques means that lexicographers can now make use of
corpora Corpus is Latin for "body". It may refer to: Linguistics * Text corpus, in linguistics, a large and structured set of texts * Speech corpus, in linguistics, a large set of speech audio files * Corpus linguistics, a branch of linguistics Music * ...
of documents to gain a more balanced view of the history of a particular word or phrase, as well as finding new quotation material to fill gaps in the history of some words; some lexicographers have noted, however, that
electronic search A search engine is an information retrieval software program that discovers, crawls, transforms and stores information for retrieval and presentation in response to user queries. A search engine normally consists of four components, that are sear ...
is not a complete replacement for manual quotation-gathering, among other things because though it can help finding examples of a word already known to exist, full-text search is less good at identifying which words need to be researched in the first place.


Examples


Anglic

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 ...
'' is the largest and best-known historical dictionary of the English language, with an aim to cover all words which saw some significant use at any time between the early
Middle English Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English p ...
period and the present day. The earlier history of English is covered in more detail by the ''
Middle English Dictionary ''The Middle English Dictionary'' is a dictionary of Middle English published by the University of Michigan. "Its 15,000 pages offer a comprehensive analysis of lexicon and usage for the period 1175–1500, based on the analysis of a collection of ...
'' (1954–2001) and the ''
Dictionary of Old English ''The Dictionary of Old English'' (''DOE'') is a dictionary of the Old English language, published by the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto, under the direction of Angus Cameron, Ashley Crandell Amos, Antonette diPaolo Healey, an ...
'' (1986–present). Despite efforts made at time of the founding of the ''Middle English Dictionary'' project to produce a dictionary of
Early Modern English Early Modern English or Early New English (sometimes abbreviated EModE, EMnE, or ENE) is the stage of the English language from the beginning of the Tudor period to the English Interregnum and Restoration, or from the transition from Middle E ...
, this never came to fruition. Several historical dictionaries exist which cover the dialects and regionalisms particular to certain geographical areas, like the ''English Dialect Dictionary'', the ''
Scottish National Dictionary The ''Scottish National Dictionary'' (''SND'') was published by the Scottish National Dictionary Association (SNDA) from 1931 to 1976 and documents the Modern (Lowland) Scots language. The original editor, William Grant, was the driving force be ...
'' and the ''
Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue The ''Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue'' (DOST) is a 12-volume dictionary that documents the history of the Scots language covering Older Scots from the earliest written evidence in the 12th century until the year 1700. DOST was compiled ...
'', the ''
Dictionary of American Regional English The ''Dictionary of American Regional English'' (''DARE'') is a record of American English as spoken in the United States, from its beginnings to the present. It differs from other dictionaries in that it does not document the standard language u ...
'', the ''Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles'', and the ''
Australian National Dictionary ''The Australian National Dictionary: Australian Words and Their Origins'' is a historical dictionary of Australian English, recording 16,000 words, phrases, and meanings of Australian origin and use. The first edition of the dictionary, edited by ...
''. Uniquely, from the 1960s to the 2000s, a historical thesaurus was produced for English, which inverts the traditional historical dictionary by showing the development of concepts into words, rather than the development of words to describe different concepts. The ''
Historical Thesaurus of English The ''Historical Thesaurus of English'' (''HTE'') is the largest thesaurus in the world. It is called a ''historical thesaurus'' as it arranges the whole vocabulary of English, from the earliest written records in Old English to the present, ac ...
'' was published in 2009 and is largely based on data from the ''Oxford English Dictionary''; a similar project is now underway for the
Scots language Scots ( endonym: ''Scots''; gd, Albais, ) is an Anglic language variety in the West Germanic language family, spoken in Scotland and parts of Ulster in the north of Ireland (where the local dialect is known as Ulster Scots). Most commonly ...
.


Croatian

* ''Rječnik hrvatskoga književnoga jezika od preporoda do Ivana Gorana Kovačića''


Dutch

The ''
Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal The ''Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal'' (''WNT''; ) is a dictionary of the Dutch language. It contains between 350,000 and 400,000 entries describing Dutch words from 1500 to 1976. The paper edition consists of 43 volumes (including three sup ...
'' is the largest dictionary of the Dutch language, founded on historical principles and published from 1864 to 1998, with a supplement following in 2001.


French

* ''
Dictionnaire de la langue française The ''Dictionnaire de la langue française'' by Émile Littré, commonly called simply the "''Littré''", is a four-volume dictionary of the French language published in Paris by Hachette. The dictionary was originally issued in 30 parts, 1863 ...
'' * ''
Trésor de la langue française The ''Trésor de la langue française'' (''TLF'', subtitled ''Dictionnaire de la langue du XIXe et du XXe siècle (1789–1960)'') is a 16-volume dictionary of 19th- and 20th-century French published by the ''Centre de Recherche pour un Trésor ...
'' * '


German

The largest historical dictionary of German is the ''
Deutsches Wörterbuch The ''Deutsches Wörterbuch'' (; "The German Dictionary"), abbreviated ''DWB'', is the largest and most comprehensive dictionary of the German language in existence.Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm and completed after their death in 1961. A second edition of the letters A–F was completed in 2016. There is also the '' Deutsches Fremdwörterbuch'' which exclusively covers words loaned into German from other languages, which were largely (though not entirely) omitted from the Grimm dictionary. There is also a ''Frühneuhochdeutsches Wörterbuch'' covering
Early Modern German Early New High German (ENHG) is a term for the period in the history of the German language generally defined, following Wilhelm Scherer, as the period 1350 to 1650. The term is the standard translation of the German (Fnhd., Frnhd.), introduce ...
, the ''Mittelhochdeutsches Wörterbuch'' covering
Middle High German Middle High German (MHG; german: Mittelhochdeutsch (Mhd.)) is the term for the form of German spoken in the High Middle Ages. It is conventionally dated between 1050 and 1350, developing from Old High German and into Early New High German. High ...
, and an ''Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch'' covering
Old High German Old High German (OHG; german: Althochdeutsch (Ahd.)) is the earliest stage of the German language, conventionally covering the period from around 750 to 1050. There is no standardised or supra-regional form of German at this period, and Old High ...
.


Irish

* ''
Dictionary of the Irish Language ''Dictionary of the Irish Language: Based Mainly on Old and Middle Irish Materials'' (also called "the DIL"), published by the Royal Irish Academy, is the definitive dictionary of the origins of the Irish language, specifically the Old Irish, M ...
''


Italian

* '' Grande dizionario della lingua italiana''


Latin

The ''
Thesaurus Linguae Latinae The ''Thesaurus Linguae Latinae'' (abbreviated as ''ThLL'' or ''TLL'') is a monumental dictionary of Latin founded on historical principles. It encompasses the Latin language from the time of its origin to the time of Isidore of Seville (died ...
'' underway in Munich is intended to be a complete historical dictionary of classical Latin. The  International Union of Academies undertook in 1924 to compile a series of national dictionaries of Latin in each of its member academies; for instance, 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 ...
produced the ''
Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources The ''Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources'' ("DMLBS") is a lexicon of Medieval Latin published by the British Academy. The dictionary is not founded upon any earlier dictionary, but derives from original research. After decades of ...
''.


Swedish

The ''
Svenska Akademiens ordbok A complete set of ''Svenska Akademiens ordbok'', as of late 2014. The majority of the volumes remain unbound in this set. ''Svenska Akademiens ordbok'' (), abbreviated SAOB, is a dictionary published by the Swedish Academy, with the official titl ...
'' (Dictionary of the Swedish Academy) is a multivolume historical dictionary (also available online) which is nearing completion.


Welsh

* ''Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru (Dictionary of the Welsh Language)''


See also

*
Etymological dictionary An etymological dictionary discusses the etymology of the words listed. Often, large dictionaries, such as the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' and ''Webster's'', will contain some etymological information, without aspiring to focus on etymology. E ...
*
Historical linguistics Historical linguistics, also termed diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of language change over time. Principal concerns of historical linguistics include: # to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages # ...


References


External links


Australian National Dictionary

A Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles

Dictionary of the Scots Language

Oxford English Dictionary
{{Lexicography Dictionaries Historical linguistics