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From The Quarterly Review.
ENGLISH DICTIONARIES.*

the original stock of English, or have since been introduced; what they meant at their first appearance in the language, THE German Dictionary of Jacob and and what they have come to mean since. Wilhelm Grimm, of which the first volIn discussing these and other kindred ume was issued nineteen years ago, has questions as to what may be distinbeen carried on by other hands since the guished as the library dictionary and the last of the two brothers died, and next schoolroom dictionary, we shall examine year may perhaps see completed its first what such works actually are, with the five volumes, about half the entire work. view of showing what they ought to be. The French Dictionary of Littré was And seeing that dictionaries, of all books, completely published last year. It is are apt to come into existence by succeshigh time to ask when and how we are sive development from author to author, to have an English Dictionary at the and from editor to editor, it will be helplevel of these admirable compilations. ful to glance over the whole history of Old and mediæval English Literature, English lexicography, tracing the series now risen into broad daylight again, must of works from the scanty and now alhave their treasures inventoried, more fully and strictly than hitherto, for mod-' ern readers. New English literature must not merely give account of its vaster possessions, but must register its titledeeds for all that it has inherited; must show its evidence for all that it has newly made at home or imported from abroad. Comparative philology has within the last two generations risen from rude and vague beginnings to the rank of a science, and far deeper linguistic knowledge is now required of the lexicographer than such as sufficed for the literary needs of a century ago. Beside this question of the great standard English Dictionary, there arises another not less important, how

far do our smaller educational dictionaries answer to present requirements? The school-room lexicon ought not indeed to be a museum of far-fetched and outlandish words, nor should it confuse the schoolboy's mind with a crowd of speculative etymologies, but it should afford reasonable information as to those words whose derivation is most certain, showing plainly whether they belong to

1. A Dictionary of the English Language. By

Robert Gordon Latham, M.A., M.D., F.R.S. Found

ed on that of Dr. Samuel Johnson, as edited by the

Rev. H. J. Todd, M. A. London, 1866–70.

2. Dr. Webster's Complete Dictionary of the English Language. Thoroughly revised and improved, by

Chauncey A. Goodrich, D.D., LL.D., late Professor of
Rhetoric and Oratory, &c., in Yale College, and Noah
Porter, D.D., Professor of Moral Philosophy and
Metaphysics in Yale College. London (cir. 1865).
3. A Dictionary of the English Language.
Joseph E. Worcester, LL.D. London (cir. 1860).

By

most forgotten vocabularies of the sevenand learned dictionaries which the modteenth century to the most voluminous ern bookseller has to offer. The comparison shows indeed great literary progress during the last quarter of our national history, yet we have to admit that this progress falls short of what might have been made, and we trust soon will be. Till late years, our dictionaries stood well in comparison with those of other countries, but at present we have fallen somewhat behind. Our Philological Society is industriously collecting and classifying a huge museum of linguistic specimens, but with no promise of immediate result, while the separate labours of individual philologists are rather directed to special scientific work than to the production of a public book of reference. Critics, in the meantime, ill-satisfied with even the better dictionaries of

England and America, must condemn the worse, which only keep a place in the book-market as educational works because the schoolmasters and parents who buy them are too ignorant of the science of language to know good from bad. It is needful to press this really important subject on public attention, for urgent demand will hasten supply. A few years hence, let us hope, we may have a more gratifying report to give. But dictionary making is a long labour, and for the moment we had rather see a limited work fairly up to the modern level, than the prospectus of a mighty lexicon that shall

throw Grimm and Littré into the shade, ¡ book which the student seldom opens withand be published A.D. 1900. out learning something, though most likeLexicons for the student learning ly not the something he is looking for. French, Latin, and Greek had been for Bailey, not content with a copious vocabmany years in use before the plain Eng-ulary of popular English, dived into techlishman was provided with a self-explain- nical books of law, alchemy, magic, and ing vocabulary of his mother-tongue, an other such repositories of quaint terms, English Dictionary in rudimentary form. bringing up scores of out-of-the-way Few but book-collectors and philologists words, which later lexicographers prunow ever see the two little volumes of dently let drop again, but which still have Bullokar and Cockeram: "An English their value, philological and historical. Expositor, teaching the Interpretation of | Thus the language of the occult sciences the Hardest Words used in our Language. in full vogue three centuries ago, is rep By J. B., Doctor of Physicke. London. resented in Bailey by such definitions as 1621." And "The English Dictionarie, the foliowing: - Cacodæmon “in Astrol or, an Interpreter of Hard English Words. ogy) the Twelfth House of a Figure of By H. C., Gent. London, 1632." These the Heavens, so called because of its little books have an interest to us, as dreadful signification "; Mercury ** (amɔng showing the humble beginnings of our Chymists) Quicksilver; and is taken for lexicography, and as preserving in the one of their active principles commonly compactest shape some noticeable pas- called Spirits." Among the dwindling sages in the history of English. They store of Arabic scientific words in Engbelong to an age when many a familiar lish, some which later dictionary-writers English word kept an early sense which discard, almugia, alidada, and the like, it has now lost, when animositie was still still remain clear and fresh to Bailey's to be defined as 66 courage"; when to mind. The following is a curious case edifie meant "to builde, to frame, some-in point: "Dulcarnon (Arab.) a certain time to instruct"; when miscreant was Proposition found out by Pythagoras, simply "an Infidell”; and pragmaticall upon the account of which he sacrificed one that understands the Law." After an Ox to the Gods, in Token of ThankBullokar and Cockeram came Edward fulness, whence Chaucer, &c., uses it to Phillips, Milton's nephew, with his "New World of Words," John Kersey, with his "Dictionarium Anglo-Britannicum," and various other compilers, who gradually improved upon the labours of their predecessors, until, about a century after the first crude attempts, a work which may be called a tolerable practical dictionary, aiming to register and explain the language at large, was given to the English public.* Nathan Bailey, a schoolmaster at Step-dhu'l karnain, “lord of the two horns." ney, brought out, about 1720, his "Etymo- Among old English law terms, again, logical English Dictionary," which not Bailey includes such as these: - abigeonly superseded the earlier vocabularies, vus, "a thief who hath stolen cattle" but was strong enough to hold a place (this word is medieval Latin, from abi_rov; through the time of Johnson, and even | bairman, "a poor insolvent Debtor, left into that of Webster. In one or other of bare and naked, who was obliged to swear its twenty or thirty editions, it is still a staple of our bookstalls; a worthy old

66

An interesting sketch of the history and bibliography of English Dictionaries is prefixed to Worcester's Dictionary.

signify any knotty Point or Question. To be at Dulcarnon, to be nonplussed, to be at ones Wits end." To clear up the whole history of this word, which has puzzled many a reader of Chaucer, the modern critic has only to add that the proposition in question is that of the squares on the sides of a right-angled triangle, and that its well-known figure probably suggested the Arabic name, which dulcarnon is intended to represent, viz.,

in Court that he was not worth more than five Shillings and five Pence." Every now and then, as we turn over the leaves,

we come upon strange words which set the word had not made its way into Engthemselves to us like puzzles, impelling lish literature in Bailey's time, so as to us to search out their origin. Thus fram- justify him in inserting an abigail as a pole-fence, "a Privilege belonging to the common noun. Again, modern English Inhabitants of the Manor of Writtle in cooks know perfectly well, though modEssex," resolves itself on further enquiry ern English dictionaries do not give it into franc-pole fence, a local tenant's right the name of the bain Marie, a hot-water of taking poles free. Again, chechinqua- | bath in which stewpans are put to keep mins, “an Indian Fruit which resembles a their contents at an equal heat. Bailey Chesnut," may, after due search, be traced has not exactly the cook's description, to Captain John Smith's "History of Vir- but that of the old chemists, who used ginia," where the fruit and its American the apparatus to heat their cucurbites, Indian name are native. It is true that or, as we should say, retorts, and knew it Bailey's alphabetical vocabulary cannot by the name of Balneum Mariæ. Trabe at all depended on as complete, dition says it was called after Mary the even as to familiar language; for in- Jewess, an ancient alchemist, though the stance, such words as cattle and pud- apparatus she invented was more like dle are left out. Still the presence or what our chemists call a sand-bath.* absence of particular words and mean- Not to pursue these curious details ings, suggests at every turn some inter- further, we may look at Bailey's Dictionesting point as to the history of English. ary from another point of view, as an exThus, in connexion with antick, a buf- ample of a fairly learned eighteenth cenfoon or grotesque figure (antique), Bailey tury Englishman's idea of the constitution inserts the phrase "to dance the anticks," of his own language. He has not reached i.e., “to dance after an odd and ridiculous the main principle of modern English philmanner, or in a ridiculous dress, like a ology that there is a staple English, distinJack-pudding." This phrase seems to guishable through above a thousand years show the transition of meaning whereby of history, during which it has at once unthe word antick passed through the de- dergone great internal increase and description of grotesque performances in crease, and been expanded by large abantique guise, till it lost the sense of an- sorption from other tongues. To Bailey, tiquity and retained only that of gro-"English Saxon "and" Norman French" tesqueness, or buffoonery, with which are alike fundamentals of modern Engmodern Englishmen speak of antics. In modern dictionaries this link in the chain of meaning is dropped, so that the etymology of the word hangs imperfectly together. To take another instance of historical evidence from Bailey's Dictionary, we find tuna, the West Indian name of the plant on which the cochineal insect is reared, but neither "prickly pear" nor "cactus" is given, so that it seems that neither had the English popular name of "prickly pear" come into use to denote the plant, nor had botanists revived, as a designation for the whole genus it belongs to, the classical term Kúkrog, cactus. So the insertion of Abigail as a personal name, but not as a sportive word for a lady's maid, reminds us that though the suggestion of this use is old enough,

66

let thine handmaid be a servant to wash the feet of the servants of my lord," yet

lish, which he defines as "now a Mixture of Saxon, Teutonic, Dutch, Danish, Norman, and Modern French, imbellished with the Greek and Latin." In his actual etymologies of words, he is scarcely trustworthy outside the very simplest and most direct. He can tell us more or less properly that to eat is from Anglo-Saxon ætan, easy from French aise, Anthropology, from vоs and oyia. But accepting the authority of the "great Names, and approved Etymologists" of his time, he was not content to follow writers like Camden or Skinner, who (as times went) kept tolerably within the limits of secure and commonplace derivations. He was led astray by reckless speculators who felt at liberty to imagine derivations where evidence fell

*See G. F. Rodwell in "Nature," Dec, 5th, 1872.