History Of English Dictionaries | Bookswagon

Dictionaries are an important tool for learning a language. Words change meaning over time and dictionaries reflect that change. They were mainly produced to spread literacy among common people so that they could read texts and ancient scriptures.

One oldest known English Dictionary was Robert Cawdrey’s A Table Alphabetical (1604) with approximately 3,000 words. About a century later Samuel Johnson produced an impressive array of 43,500 words in a dictionary. Meanwhile, in America, Noah Webster’s dictionary was taking shape due to the changes and variations within language.

The famous Oxford English Dictionary took birth with the realisation of the members of the Philosophical Society of London that the existing dictionaries of their time are incomplete and inadequate. Thus, they started a re-examination of the language and closely studied it from Anglo-Saxon times. This was the beginning of a huge project. Eventually, the Society entered into an agreement with Oxford University Press and James A.H. Murray. They started working on a new dictionary which came to be known as the Oxford English Dictionary.

This ambitious project tried to cover all English words since Early Middle English, i.e, 1150 AD onwards. It was believed that the project would take about five years. However, the complexities of the languages and challenges extended the ita time period. Murray and his colleagues had a big responsibility to not only include the new words and their meanings but also undertake an examination of the previous seven centuries and trace the development of language.

For the next forty year, the work on the new dictionary continued. Murray and his colleagues worked relentlessly and diligently. Their work was finally published in 1928 as A New Dictionary on Historical Principles, consisting of 400,000 words and phrases in ten volumes. Unfortunately, Murray died in 1915 and could not witness the successful completion of his work. He would have never imagined that an initiative started by some visionaries would become the pioneer of the most respected dictionaries in the world and most authoritative source in the English speaking world.

Language is always evolving and changing. This is the toughest challenge for any dictionary: it should reflect the subtle changes happening in the languages. So, in a way, no Dictionary is complete or fully finished. Over the years, updating of the Dictionary began. It was due to these continuous efforts to improve and enhance the quality of Oxford Dictionary that it has gained such a respected position in the world of dictionaries.

With the technological advancement, dictionaries have als tried to modernise themselves. For example, in 1992, Oxford English Dictionary released a CD-ROM edition of its work. Now, thousands of words could be stored in a small disk.

Even today, all these famous dictionaries are under constant alteration and improvisation. That is what makes them so accredited and special.