The evolution of English lexicography by James Augustus Henry Murray
page 14 of 42 (33%)
page 14 of 42 (33%)
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Of printed English-Latin works, after the _Promptorium_, one of the
earliest was the _Vulgaria_ of William Herman, Headmaster and Provost of Eton, printed by Pynson in 1519. This is a _Dictionarium_ or _liber dictionarius_ in the older sense, for it consists of short _dictiones_ or sayings, maxims, and remarks, arranged under subject-headings, such as _De Pietate_, _De Impietate_, _De corporis dotibus_, _De Valetudinis cura_, _De Hortensibus_, _De Bellicis_, and finally a heading _Promiscua_. It may therefore be conceived that it is not easy to find any particular _dictio_. Horman was originally a Cambridge man; but, according to Wood, he was elected a Fellow of New College, Oxford, in 1477, the very year in which Caxton printed his first book in England, and in this connexion it is interesting to find among the illustrative sentences in the _Vulgaria_, this reference to the new art (sign. Oij): 'The prynters haue founde a crafte to make bokes by brasen letters sette in ordre by a frame,' which is thus latinized: 'Chalcographi artem excogitauerunt imprimendi libros qua literæ formis æreis excudunt.' Of later English-Latin dictionaries two deserve passing mention: the _Abecedarium_ of Richard Huloet or Howlet, a native of Wisbech, which appeared in the reign of Edward VI, in 1552, and the Alvearie of John Baret, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, published under Elizabeth in 1573. The Abecedarium, although it gives the Latin equivalents, may be looked upon to some extent as an English dictionary, for many of the words have an English explanation, as well as a Latin rendering; thus _Almesse_, or gift of dryncke, meate, or money, distributed to the poore, _sporta_, _sportula_; _Amyable_, pleasante, or hauing a good grace, _amabilis_; _Anabaptistes_, a sorte of heretyques of late tyme in Germanye about the yere of our Lorde God 1524.... _Anabaptistæ_. Baret's _Alvearie_ of 1573 has been justly styled 'one of the most |
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