Precursors
Where, precisely, does modern English lexicography begin? Much depends on what we mean by “English dictionary.”
Glossaries explaining the words of a single text antedate the printed book in Europe. Not long after Gutenberg there are printed wordbooks, but most are bilingual dictionaries: Greek–Latin, Latin–French, Latin–English. We begin with these multilingual dictionaries before progressing into monolingual English dictionaries.
In the early days, lawyers advanced the art significantly. Perhaps that’s unsurprising, given that law is a profession whose only tool is words.
POINTING THE DIRECTION
Manuscript leaf from a Latin word-list, the terms deriving from canon law. Germany, 15th century.
This page is typical of late-medieval dictionaries: double columns of 52 lines in a squat secretarial hand, with important words underlined in red, capitals and paragraphs touched in red, running titles (e.g., “A”) at column heads on the rectos, and a calligraphic three-line initial A opening the entry Anathema est eternae mortis damnatio (“Anathema is the condemnation of eternal death”). The page contains several neat manicules (pointing hands) and marginalia directing readers to adjacent readings. Half the entries on this leaf relate to the perennially controversial topic of abortion.
Ex coll. Karolyne & Bryan A. Garner. HHD p. xxiii
BIFURCATED LEGAL TERMS
Jodocus of Erfurt. Vocabularius Juris Utriusque Iuris. Basel: Michael Wenssler, 1474.
Though published without attribution, this famous law dictionary was identified in many early manuscripts as being by Jodocus, a doctor of decretals in Erfurt, Germany. It went through more than 70 printed editions over the following 150 years. The title means “the vocabulary of each of the two [systems of] law”—that is, canon law and civil law.
This copy is on loan from the Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law. The Garner Collection copy, dated 1491 and bearing the title Vocabularium Iuris, was printed in Venice.
Courtesy of SMU Dedman School of Law. HHD p. xx
DO NOT REMOVE FROM READING ROOM
Johannes Calderinus. Repertorium Iuris. Basel: Michael Wenssler, 12 Dec. 1474.
This large, elaborate law dictionary, rubricated throughout, is thought to have been printed later in the same year as Jodocus’s. Though unattributed, it’s credited to Johannes Calderinus, who taught at Bologna. This copy was a chained book early in its life: the back board bears a hole in which the chain was secured to the book.
Ex coll. Karolyne & Bryan A. Garner. HHD p. 2
EVOLVED POLYGLOT
Ambrogio Calepino. Ambrosii Bergomatis Dictionarium, ex optimis quibusdam authoribus. Strasbourg: Gruninger, 1510.
Friar Calepino of Bergamo first printed his Dictionarium in 1502. Said to be one of the most dogged lexicographers in history, he produced the most influential of Renaissance dictionaries—and went blind in the effort. Although the first few editions, like this one, were monolingual Latin dictionaries, over time the work became a polyglot dictionary covering Hebrew, Greek, French, Italian, German, Spanish, and English.
Ex coll. Karolyne & Bryan A. Garner. HHD p. xx
CAN LEXICOGRAPHY COEXIST WITH MARRIAGE?
Thomas Elyot. Bibliotheca Eliotæ, Eliotis Librarie. This Dictionarie Now New. London: Thomas Berthelet, 1548. 3d ed.
Hans Holbein the Younger. Portrait of Sir Thomas Elyot. Published by Reinthal & Newman, NY, ca. 1920.
Thomas Cooper. Thesaurus Linguæ Romanæ & Britannicæ. London: [Richard Stephani?], 1573. 2d ed.
Elyot, who led a storied life as Henry VIII’s failed emissary to help annul the marriage to Catherine of Aragon, issued the first book ever to be called a dictionary. This 1548 edition was prepared after Elyot’s death by Thomas Cooper, to whom belongs one of the most dramatic stories in the annals of lexicography. Cooper’s wife, Amy, became livid about her husband’s preoccupation with his Thesaurus. She threw the only manuscript of it into the fire, setting his work back a decade. He reputedly forgave her and started anew.
Ex coll. Karolyne & Bryan A. Garner. HHD nos. 2 & 3
TWO DICTIONARIES IN ONE
John Rastell. Exposiciones Terminoru[m] Legu[m] Angloru[m]. London: John Rastell, [1523 + 1530].
Rastell’s Exposiciones is a law dictionary with two complete columns: one in English, one in Law French. It isn’t a bilingual dictionary in the conventional sense—with a headword in one language and a definition in another. The English column is fully in English. In 1999, the Tarlton Law Library acquired this copy as its one-millionth book. The librarians soon discovered that it’s a “sophisticated” copy, with a 1523 title page married to the 1530 edition. The conjoining appears to have occurred during the 16th century.
Courtesy of Tarlton Law Library, University of Texas. HHD no. 1
OLDEST RASTELL ON THIS CONTINENT
John Rastell. Exposiciones Terminoru[m] Legu[m] Angloru[m]. London: John Rastell, [1525].
This copy of Rastell is the oldest in North America. It contains 169 alphabetically arranged entries. The English column defines such terms as abbot, abeyance, acceptance, action, accord, acquittal, additions, adjournment, administrator, agreement, aid—and we’re barely into A.
Is it an English dictionary? The question may be whether “first English dictionary” means the first dictionary in English or the first dictionary of English. One column is indisputably in English, but a law dictionary doesn’t purport to be a dictionary of English.
Courtesy of Harvard Law Library Historical & Special Collections.
HOLLIS no. 990097219920203941. HHD no. 1
RASTELL REMADE WITH ENGLISH APLENTY
John Rastell. Exposiciones Terminoru[m] Legu[m] Angloru[m]. London: John Rastell, 1579.
In this 1579 edition, also on loan from Harvard Law, the number of entries grew from 169 to 282. Many of the newly added headwords derive not from Law French but from Old English, as with boote and Burgh English. Hence this edition, along with another that preceded Cawdrey’s 1604 Table Alphabeticall, is indisputably a work of English lexicography. Almost all the headwords are attested in English from well before the publication date. So half of it is a dictionary in English, but it contains almost exclusively legal terminology. Might it count as an English dictionary?
Courtesy of Harvard Law Library Historical & Special Collections. HOLLIS no. 990043552840203941. HHD no. 1
THE LAW IN SCOTTISH ENGLISH
John Skene. De Verborum Significatione: The Exposition of the Termes and Difficill Wordes, Conteined in the foure Buikes of Regiam Majestatem, and uthers, in the Actes of Parliament . . . . Edinburgh: Robert Waldegrave, 1597.
Skene, a Scotsman, produced the second law dictionary for the English-speaking world. Despite its Latin title, the text of the dictionary is mostly Scots English, with some mongrelized Latin thrown in (as was the habit of lawyers). The book isn’t well known, and it’s neglected in histories of English lexicography. It came seven years before Cawdrey. Does the fact that it’s Scots disqualify it as a work of English lexicography?
Ex coll. Karolyne & Bryan A. Garner. HHD no. 4
DON’T REPREHEND
John Minsheu. A Dictionarie in Spanish and English. London: Edm. Bollifant, 1599.
John Minsheu traveled extensively and was once imprisoned by Spaniards—a helpful happenstance for an aspiring bilingual lexicographer. Returning to England, he established a language school and began this dictionary, enlisting the help of prisoners from the Spanish Armada.
Worried about its reception, Minsheu tried to forestall critics: “They that busie themselves in reprehending the faults of other mens writings, their owne are likely never to come to light.” He presaged the experience of centuries of lexicographers, saying that it is “harde to please fewe, harder to please many, impossible to please all.”
Ex coll. Karolyne & Bryan A. Garner. HHD no. 6
CHAUCERIAN STANDARD-BEARER
Thomas Speght, ed. The Workes of our ancient and learned English poet, Geffrey Chaucer . . . The signification of the old and obscure words proved [etc.]. London: Adam Islip, 1602. 2d ed.
Thomas Speght of Cambridge was the first to attempt to explicate Chaucerian English. With 2,607 entries, Speght’s glossary was limited in scope, skimpy in its definitions, and marred by inaccuracies. But it was a pioneering overview of an earlier stage of the language, and it introduced obsolete and obsolescent words into the 17th-century “hard word” tradition. In some ways Speght anticipated Cawdrey, whose innovation two years later would be having not a glossary appended to a larger work, but instead a stand-alone general wordbook.
Ex coll. Karolyne & Bryan A. Garner. HHD no. 5