During the 16th and 17th centuries there arose a need for new words for the many discoveries and developments in different areas of science. Many authors felt that English was imperfect when compared to the classical languages Latin and Greek and thought that one means of remedying this deficiency would be to borrow new words from these sources. Indeed the general impression that English had decayed considerably continued into the 18th century (and is still to be found nowadays in many quarters). For instance, Jonathan Swift published a Proposal for Correcting, Improving, and Ascertaining the English Tongue in 1712 because he was of the opinion that the language was deteriorating rapidly. Attitudes like these led straight to the prescriptivist tradition which came to the fore in the 18th century.
Before this time there was pressure which led to a considerable expansion of the vocabulary of English, largely through borrowings from Latin and Greek. Such loans were not always welcomed by the general literate public and the expressions which were employed to convey putative new meanings were dubbed ‘inkhorn terms’ and ‘hard words’.
The term would appear to have been used for the first time in the title of John Day’s glossary A gatheryng of certayne harde wordes in the newe Testament, with their exposicion (1551) — a translation of a French work in which the reference ‘hard words’ renders the expression mots difficiles contained in the title of the original work.
The rise of the dictionary
Robert Cawdrey’s Table Alphabeticall (1604) is normally considered to be the earliest of all ‘hard word’ dictionaries, as it is the first one to mention this term explicitly on its title-page: ‘A Table Alphabeticall, conteyning and teaching the true writing, and understanding of hard usuall English wordes...’. In compiling his dictionary, Cawdrey drew to a large extent on previous Latin-English dictionaries such as Thomas Cooper’s Thesaurus Linguae Romanae et Britannicae (1565) and Thomas Thomas’ Dictionarium Linguae Latinae et Anglicanae (1587). The aim of the dictionary is clearly indicated in the subtitle to the work: ‘for the benefit and helpe of Ladies, Gentlewomen, or any other unskilfull persons’.
John Bullokar’s English Expositor (1616) quickly followed suit, thus establishing a tradition of hard word dictionaries. In comparison with Cawdrey, Bullokar included more words and provided more detailed explanations of his entries: some of his glosses were expanded into paragraphs or even short articles taking up at times one of the two columns of the pages of his dictionary. Henry Cockeram’s English Dictionarie (1623) was the next major work in the tradition of hard word dictionaries. In his search for terms to be included in his work Cockeram relied largely on previous hard word and Latin dictionaries, but also added several entries taken from various texts and not yet reported in those types of publications.
Other authors were soon to follow and produced further hard word dictionaries such as Thomas Blount’s Glossographia (1656). Apart from dedicated dictionaries There are also grammars with hard word lists, stretching back for considerable time, for instance, Edmund Coote’s The English Schoole-Maister (1596) — an early grammar of the English language — contains such a list of hard words, which seems to have inspired Cawdrey in the preparation of his dictionary.
General dictionaries before Johnson were produced by a variety of authors who can be seen as forming the background against which Johnson can be truly assessed. Below is a selection of such dictionaries; the last one can be seen as a precur of Johnson’s great dictionary.
Edward Philips New Word of English Words (1658)
Edward Cocker English Dictionary (1704)
Nathan Bailey Universal Etymological English Dictionary (1721; 1727)
Nathan Bailey et al. Dictionarium Britannicum (1730)
Dr. Johnson’s dictionary
The single towering figure in early lexicography is undoubtedly Samuel Johnson (1709-1784). Johnson responded to the general feeling of his time that an authoritive work of lexicography for English was needed which would set standards of correctness for the language. He was commissioned by a group of London book-sellers to perform the task and in 1755 after some eight or nine years of preparation his Dictionary of the English Language appeared and was recognised in his lifetime as a masterpiece of its kind. Johnson had a great respect for literary authority and sought to clarify definitions by quoting from the great English authors who preceded him, Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, etc. His stance was conservative but it was oriented towards attested (literary) English rather than trying to propagate some kind of overy Latinate and ornate use of language. It is difficult to quantify his influence but as a figure he is unmatched until Noah Webster (1758-1843) in America and James Murray (1837-1915) in England/Scotland, the initiator of what was to become The Oxford English Dictionary (completed in 1933).
There is a tradition of referring to Samuel Johnson as ‘Dr. Johnson’. He did not do a doctoral thesis at a university but received a honorary title from Trinity College, Dublin in 1765.
The Oxford English Dictionary
The Oxford University Press publishes a wide range of dictionaries all of which are derivates of a few basic types. The largest and original one is simply termed the Oxford English Dictionary and itself goes back to the A new English dictionary on historical principles which was started by the Scottish lexicographer Sir James Murray (1837-1915), though plans go back to the middle of the 19th century (see reference to R. C. Trench below).
It was finally published in 1928 and 1933. A supplement to this was produced between 1972 and 1986 in four volumes under the guidance of Robert W. Burchfield. A second edition of this dictionary (1989) is available in three formats: in 13 volumes, in 2 volumes in condensed print and on a CD-ROM (version 3 was made available in 2002).
The two other main dictionaries produced by Oxford University Press and 1) The Shorter Oxford Dictionary and 2) The Concise Dictionary (10th edition, 2000, also available on CD-ROM), both monolingual dictionaries with historical information.
Oxford University Press also publishes some specialised dictionaries, such as the Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, the Oxford Study Thesaurus or the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, and related works, such as guide to English usage, as well as the Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (compiled by A. S. Hornby) and a bilingual dictionary (1990, by Werner Scholze-Stubenrecht and John Sykesin) in co-operation with the Duden Verlag, all of which are of value to the student of English. The following are some further dictionaries in a similar vein.
Oxford Paperback Thesaurus. 2001. Second Edition. Oxford: University Press. Oxford Dictionary of Current English. 2001. Second Edition. Oxford: University Press. The Oxford Encyclopedic English Dictionary. 1991. Oxford: University Press. Illustrated Oxford Dictionary. 2003. Oxford: University Press.
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