Story of Lexicography Told in New Grolier Club Exhibition

The 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 topic of abortion. 

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.” 

Samuel Johnson. A Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. London: Printed by W. Strahan for J. & P. Knapton et al., 1755.

Johnson’s monumental Dictionary marks an epoch in English lexicography, an achievement unlike anything that came before. His 43,000 headwords were supported by 115,000 quotations from great writers. The first great “splitter” in English defining, Johnson revealed subtle shades of meaning with numbered senses and extensive treatment of phrasal verbs (take in, take off, take on, take over, take to, take up). His preface is a remarkable document, the best account ever written about the challenges in marshaling the English vocabulary. 

William Perry. The Royal Standard English Dictionary. Worcester, MA: Isaiah Thomas, 1788. 1st American ed.

Although Webster is known as the Father of the American Dictionary, his wasn’t the first dictionary printed in North America. That was The Royal Standard English Dictionary, originating in Scotland but reissued in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1788. Twelve years after America had renounced royalty, this Royal dictionary was incongruously dedicated to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Printer Isaiah Thomas produced five editions by 1800. Other American editions were soon being printed by Ebenezer Merriam, aided by two apprentices, his nephews George and Charles. That marked the inception of the Merriam family’s dictionary-publishing empire. 

Copyright certificate for Worcester’s abridgment of Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language. Filed with the federal district clerk of Massachusetts - jointly in the names of Noah Webster and Joseph E. Worcester - on 29 September 29, 1829.

This is Webster’s own copy of an infuriating document: a copyright jointly held with his nemesis, Worcester. The handwriting is Chauncey Goodrich’s. Not that he was a schemer, but Goodrich soon procured from Worcester a written disclaimer of any interest in the book. Then he obtained an assignment of copyright from Webster, who wanted to distance himself from the book. Because Goodrich got rich from it, an upset Webster disinherited Goodrich and his wife. 

Peter Mark Roget. Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases. London: Longman, 
Brown et al., 1852.

As a young physician, Roget dreamed of  creating a “thesaurus”, Greek for “treasury". After retiring, he divided the English language into a thousand categories, gathered into five groups: Abstract Relations, Space, Matter, Intellect, Volition, and Affections. An instant success, the book went through 25 printings during Roget’s lifetime. This second edition is inscribed by Roget to his son, John Lewis Roget, who produced editions from 1879 into the 20th century; it bears the bookplate of his grandson Samuel Romilly Roget, who became editor in 1908. 

Clarence Major. Dictionary of Afro-American Slang. New York: International Pubs., 1970.

Linguists began to take African American speech seriously in the early 20th century, but it took until 1970 to get a book-length dictionary. Poet and novelist Clarence Major took many words from jazz (offbeat). Some are joyous (hot dog!) and some playful (cute suit with the loop droop), but Major doesn’t shy away from “prison slang, the jargon arising out of the drug scene, prostitute and pimp parlance, the gambling and numbers racket lingo.”

Bruce Rodgers. The Queens’ Vernacular: A Gay Lexicon. San Francisco: Straight Arrow Books, 1972.

Publishing a candid “dictionary of homophile cant” in 1972 took courage. Just three years since the Stonewall uprising, homosexuality was still classed as “sexual deviation” and was illegal in 46 of the 50 states. But Bruce Rodgers was convinced that “gay slang, like black slang, enriches our language immeasurably.” This inexpensive paperback in brilliant lavender -the color associated with gay rights before the LGBTQ rainbow edged it out - was meant to reach a wide audience. 

Cheris Kramarae and Paula Treichler, with Ann Russo. A Feminist Dictionary. Boston: Pandora Press, 1985.

If A Feminist Dictionary doesn’t look much like other dictionaries, that’s because it’s an avowed polemic rather than a work of practical lexicography. Professors Cheris Kramarae and Paula Treichler produced what one archivist called “sort of a cross between the OED and the Whole Earth Catalog.” They use a dictionary format to get readers to question the ideology behind ostensibly neutral and objective reference books, which are “constructed almost entirely by men with male readers and users in mind.” 

Henry Louis Gates Jr., ed. The Oxford Dictionary of African American English. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, projected for 2025. Draft entries, with track changes, for Aunt Hagar’s children and cakewalk.

Strange to say, but in the year 2024 there is still no comprehensive dictionary of one of the most distinctive and historically important varieties of English, that used in African American communities. (The pioneering Clarence Major focused only on slang.) The gap will soon be filled. In 2022 came the announcement of an in-progress Oxford Dictionary of African American English, overseen by Harvard’s Henry Louis Gates Jr. Lexicography remains a vital enterprise, and there are still urgent tasks to do, more than half a millennium after the earliest printed dictionaries.