This study explores the topical, i.e. non-alphabetical, word-lists which appeared between the beginnings of written culture and 1700. A form of early dictionary, these lists provide evidence on cultural history and linguistic development.

Between the beginnings of European lexicography and 1700, many glossaries and dictionaries were arranged not according to the alphabet, but in a topical order which followed the influential paradigms of theology, philosophy, and natural history at that time. Together with related text genres like treatises on terminology, didactic dialogues, and thesauri, they constitute the topical (or onomasiological) tradition which is an important lexicographical tradition in its own right. This book discusses the tradition's principles and origins, and by way of illustration draws upon early glossaries, treatises for the learning of foreign languages, and didactic dialogues. Later comprehensive works are presented as detailed in-depth studies. Professor Hüllen demonstrates that the English tradition is embedded in a complex Continental tradition whose important representatives, such as Adrianus Junius and Comenius, had a great influence on the English scene.

Eighteenth-century English grammarians plead eloquently for purity, precision and perspicuity, but their method of teaching largely amounts to citing examples of impurity, imprecision and lack of clarity from contemporary writings. This book is the first of its kind to provide a detailed systematic account of such 'errors'. Apart from source and page references, the Dictionary gives the context of the error (I have not wept this forty years), the correct or 'target' form ('these forty years'), the name of the authors quoted by the grammarians ('Addison', 'Swift'), and the labels which sum up their assessment of the error ('absurd', 'solecism'). It operates with error categories such as ambiguity, ellipsis and government (fourteen in all), which are subdivided into grammatically described main entries, subentries, and so on. The Introduction includes a guide to the use of the Dictionary, the grammatical code, and a discussion of grammatical concepts, error typologies, problems of identifying literary sources, attitudes to correctness, grammatical figures, and other topics. A Bibliography and an Index of lexical items and technical terms round off the volume. The way the Dictionary is organized should make it possible to find in it the answer to a wide variety of questions pertaining to grammar, style and linguistic historiography.

Three major developments in English lexicography took place during the seventeenth century: the emergence of the first free standing monolingual English dictionaries; the making of new kinds of English lexicons that investigated dialect or etymology or that keyed English to invented 'philosophical' languages; and the massive expansion of bilingual lexicography, which not only placed English alongside the European vernaculars but also handled the languages of the new world. The essays in this volume discuss not only the internal history of lexicography but also its wider relationships with culture and society.

Laying the foundations for the first monolingual dictionaries of English, the sixteenth century in English lexicography is here shown to form a bridge between the glossarial compilations which had slowly evolved during the Middle Ages, and the more recognisably modern dictionary incorporating synonymy, illustrative citations and other standard features. The articles collected here treat general lexicography and dictionaries in this period, their uses, and the state of research in this field. The volume also covers a fascinating and diverse collection of lexicographers, from the well known - John Palsgrave, Thomas Cooper, Thomas Elyot and John Florio - to those about whom next to nothing is known - Richard Howlet, John Baret and Peter Levens.

This book deals with monolingual English dictionaries from 1604 to 1702. The major scholarly reference works which individually treat early English dictionaries are De Witt Starnes and Gertrude Noyes’s English Dictionary from Cawdrey to Johnson: 1604–1755 (1946) and The Oxford History of English Lexicography (2009) edited by A. P. Cowie. However, when we proceed with reading the dictionaries with primary attention to their provision of lexical information, an array of deficiencies in Starnes and Noyes’s account stands out. There are two main reasons for these deficiencies; one is the fact that Starnes and Noyes’s analyses of the dictionaries are mainly made in accordance with the contents of their title pages and introductory materials, and the other is that the two authorities are excessively conscious of the external history of the dictionaries they discuss. The method of investigation of the dictionaries in this book differs greatly from these previous studies. Through it, various facts, which have been unnoticed for centuries, come to be revealed, including not only an array of historically significant methods for the lexical treatment of words and phrases, but also the highly creative use of other dictionaries in one specific dictionary, as well as the previously unrecognized direct and indirect influence of one dictionary on others.

The Bloomsbury Companion to Lexicography offers the definitive guide to a key area of linguistic study. Each companion is a comprehensive reference resource featuring an overview of key topics, research areas, new directions and a manageable guide to beginning or developing research in the field. Lexicography, as the practice of compiling dictionaries, has a long tradition that has been, for much of the time, largely independent of linguistics. The direct influence of linguistics on lexicography goes back around 50 years, though longer in the case of learners' dictionaries. The present volume aims to reflect on the research that has been and is being done in lexicography and to point the way forward. It tackles, among other topics, the critique of dictionaries in the electronic medium, the future of historical lexicography in the electronic mode with special reference to the online Oxford English Dictionary, and e-lexicography in general.