Editing Dictionary (section)

===English dictionaries in Britain===

The earliest dictionaries in the English language were glossaries of French, Spanish or Latin words along with their definitions in English. The word "dictionary" was invented by an Englishman called [[John of Garland]] in 1220{{snd}} he had written a book ''[[Dictionarius (Johannes de Garlandia)|Dictionarius]]'' to help with Latin "diction".<ref>Mark Forsyth. The etymologicon. // Icon Books Ltd. London N79DP, 2011. p. 128</ref> An [[Early English dictionaries|early non-alphabetical list of 8000 English words]] was the ''Elementarie'', created by [[Richard Mulcaster]] in 1582.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/dic/mul/elementarie.html|title=1582 – Mulcaster's Elementarie|website=www.bl.uk|access-date=13 October 2017|archive-date=11 October 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171011021428/http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/dic/mul/elementarie.html|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>[http://angli02.kgw.tu-berlin.de/lexicography/b_history.html A Brief History of English Lexicography] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080309181613/http://angli02.kgw.tu-berlin.de/lexicography/b_history.html |date=9 March 2008 }}, Peter Erdmann and See-Young Cho, [[Technical University of Berlin|Technische Universität Berlin]], 1999.</ref>

The first purely English alphabetical dictionary was ''[[Table Alphabeticall|A Table Alphabeticall]]'', written by English schoolteacher [[Robert Cawdrey]] in 1604.<ref name="thought" /><ref name="britannica" /> The only surviving copy is found at the [[Bodleian Library]] in [[Oxford]]. This dictionary, and the many imitators which followed it, was seen as unreliable and nowhere near definitive. [[Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield]] was still lamenting in 1754, 150 years after Cawdrey's publication, that it is "a sort of disgrace to our nation, that hitherto we have had no… standard of our language; our dictionaries at present being more properly what our neighbors the Dutch and the Germans call theirs, word-books, than dictionaries in the superior sense of that title."<ref>[http://JackLynch.net/Papers/firstdict.html Jack Lynch, "How Johnson's Dictionary Became the First Dictionary" (delivered 25 August 2005 at the Johnson and the English Language conference, Birmingham)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190829231146/http://jacklynch.net/Papers/firstdict.html |date=29 August 2019 }} Retrieved 12 July 2008,</ref>

In 1616, John Bullokar described the history of the dictionary with his "English Expositor". ''Glossographia'' by [[Thomas Blount (lexicographer)|Thomas Blount]], published in 1656, contains more than 10,000 words along with their etymologies or histories. [[Edward Phillips]] wrote another dictionary in 1658, entitled "[[The New World of English Words]]: Or a General Dictionary" which boldly [[Plagiarism|plagiarized]] Blount's work, and the two criticized each other. This created more interest in the dictionaries. [[John Wilkins]]' 1668 [[An Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language|essay on philosophical language]] contains a list of 11,500 words with careful distinctions, compiled by [[William Lloyd (bishop of Worcester)|William Lloyd]].<ref>{{cite book|author=John P. Considine|title=Dictionaries in Early Modern Europe: Lexicography and the Making of Heritage|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cqBkQFiTbX4C&pg=PA298|access-date=16 May 2016|date=27 March 2008|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-88674-1|page=298}}</ref> [[Elisha Coles]] published his "English Dictionary" in 1676.

It was not until [[Samuel Johnson]]'s ''[[A Dictionary of the English Language]]'' (1755) that a more reliable English dictionary was produced.<ref name="britannica" /> Many people today mistakenly believe that Johnson wrote the first English dictionary: a testimony to this legacy.<ref name="thought" /><ref name = "wblqfm">{{cite web|url=http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Papers/firstdict.html|title=Lynch, "How Johnson's Dictionary Became the First Dictionary"|website=andromeda.rutgers.edu|access-date=13 October 2017|archive-date=6 June 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110606025835/http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Papers/firstdict.html|url-status=dead}}</ref> By this stage, dictionaries had evolved to contain textual references for most words, and were arranged alphabetically, rather than by topic (a previously popular form of arrangement, which meant all animals would be grouped together, etc.). Johnson's masterwork could be judged as the first to bring all these elements together, creating the first "modern" dictionary.<ref name = "wblqfm"/>

Johnson's dictionary remained the English-language standard for over 150 years, until the [[Oxford University Press]] began writing and releasing the ''[[Oxford English Dictionary]]'' in short [[wikt:fascicle|fascicles]] from 1884 onwards.<ref name="britannica" /> A complete ten-volume first edition<ref name="c479">{{cite web | title=The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) | website=Encyclopedia Britannica | date=20 July 1998 | url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Oxford-English-Dictionary | access-date=14 September 2024}}</ref> was not released until 1928.<ref name="s764">{{cite news | last=Dirda | first=Michael | title=The most influential crowdsourcing project happened long before Wikipedia | newspaper=Washington Post | date=12 October 2023 | url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2023/10/12/dictionary-people-book-review/ | access-date=14 September 2024}}</ref> One of the main contributors to this modern dictionary was an ex-army surgeon, [[William Chester Minor]], a convicted murderer who was confined to an asylum for the criminally insane.<ref>[[Simon Winchester]], ''[[The Surgeon of Crowthorne]]''.</ref>

The OED remains the most comprehensive and trusted English language dictionary to this day, with revisions and updates added by a dedicated team every three months.