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 History of
Dictionaries
For everything under the sky there
is a beginning and an end. Though for many things, we will not be
there to see the end, fortunately we can trace the beginnings of
many things. The discipline of tracing back the beginning of an
entity’s life cycle is history. On that count everything that exists
under the sky will have a history. The same thing applies to the
history of dictionaries. Not many sources that talk about the
history of dictionaries. The importance of this article is derived
from the existing limitation on the available sources on the history
of dictionaries.
 Before getting into the discussion
on the history of dictionaries, we need to define clearly the
meaning of the term dictionary. Dictionary can be defined as an
anthology of words of a language. To make the reference easier, the
words in a dictionary will be arranged in alphabetical order.
However, the term dictionary is loosely understood as any
alphabetically arranged collection of written material on any
coherent subject or field.
The first recorded form of
dictionary much to the surprise of many is dated back to the 7th
century BC. It is interesting to note that the concept of dictionary
was conceived in
7th century BC. This
first dictionary belongs to the library of the Ashurbanipal, the
king of Assyria, Nineveh. As one can expect the dictionary was not a
paperback!!! It was clay tablets with cuneiform inscriptions.
Followed by this in terms of chronology was the Latin dictionary by
Verrius Flaccus. Though we are unable to exactly place this
dictionary in time line, it was opined by the scholars that it must
have been written around 3rd or 2nd century
BC.
The evidence of next available
dictionary takes a leap to 5th century AD and later.
These dictionaries take a big leap not only in terms of chronology
but, it also takes big leap in terms of Geographical location. The 5th
AD century dictionaries are Sanskrit dictionaries. These are
polyglot dictionaries in Sanskrit, Tibetan, Mongolian and Chinese.
During this time were also found dictionaries in botany, astronomy
and medicine in Sanskrit. Following these, were dictionaries in
Hebrew between 6th to 8th centuries AD.
How about the sophisticated Greeks
and Romans? Did their sophisticated minds not conceive anything on
collection and listing of the words of their language? The Greeks
had something similar to glossaries of unusual words and phrases
rather than a comprehensive and exhaustive collection of words of
their language.
The need for bilingual and
multilingual dictionaries was realized at a greater magnitude with
the advent of mass movement of people enabled by trade and commerce
– there was a growing need to learn and master foreign languages.
One such bilingual dictionary dates back to 1502 AD, it was
initially compiled by an Italian monk by name Ambrogio Calpeno. This
work was later extended to incorporate Italian, French and Spanish.
The same work grew to become a massive work that had a collection of
eleven languages in 1590.
After this period there was a huge
explosion on the number and availability of dictionaries. It is
difficult to keep track of the outburst of dictionaries and list
them all after this period.
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