A Table Alphabeticall, conteyning and teaching the true writing, and understanding of hard usuall English wordes

Robert Cawdrey

A Table Alphabeticall, conteyning and teaching the true writing, and understanding of hard usuall English wordes

London

Printed by I[ames] R[oberts] for Edmund Weaver

1604

Facsimile, 1966

There had already been bilingual dictionaries and subject-specific dictionaries, but no work before Cawdrey’s Table Alphabeticall covered words from across the whole language, having both headwords and definitions in English.  The book defines about 2,500 “hard usuall English wordes,” mostly learned imports from Latin and Greek. It’s the first in a long line of 17th-century hard-word dictionaries. The title page identifies the book’s target audience: “unskilfull persons,” including “ladies” and “gentlewomen.” To benefit the unskillful, he devoted a whole paragraph to explaining alphabetical order.

Ex coll. Karolyne & Bryan A. Garner. HHD no. 7