Reset Password
If you've forgotten your password, you can enter your email address below. An email will then be sent with a link to set up a new password.
Cancel
Reset Link Sent
If the email is registered with our site, you will receive an email with instructions to reset your password. Password reset link sent to:
Check your email and enter the confirmation code:
Don't see the email?
  • Resend Confirmation Link
  • Start Over
Close
If you have any questions, please contact Customer Service
Forgot password?
Blogs > lickmelightly > Sugar and Spice

My curious mind  

lickmelightly 42F
429 posts
1/10/2011 2:41 pm
My curious mind

Ok my curious mind has been wondering this question for quiet sometime now. Thought I'd throw it out to all you bloggers and see who might know. Oh I suppose you all might want to know what I am curious about. LOL
Who or how did the dictionary get started and when? And how is it the words we know got their meanings? Was it someone said "ok this is just going to mean this, and that's that." I did search and this is what I found.

It is from a question and answer thing:
No one person gets this credit. Samuel Johnson is most often credited with this task, but it's not true - not even he claimed it to be so. One of the earliest known dictionaries - and it's still around - was written in Latin and compiled during the reign of Augustus. The Chinese had a dictionary in the third century B.C.

In 1604 Robert Cawdrey created the first English language dictionary and in 1656 Thomas Blount also published a dictionary. Johnson didn't crank his out until 1755.

In 1806 the Americans put the British to shame when Noah Webster compiled his dictionary of the English language. It became a best seller and drove the British Philological Society to begin compiling a comprehensive dictionary, which would later become the Oxford English Dictionary. It took more than a century and several different editors to get the thing published in full form. The first edition was actually worked on from 1860 to 1952, though plans went back earlier. The most famous editor was James Murray, a man of working class origins. However, he neither began the project nor saw it complete. He did, however, create a successful methodology for getting the project done.
Always be yourself
GrimmJackk 55M
57 posts
1/10/2011 4:56 pm

 The study of word origins is etymology.


lickmelightly 42F
411 posts
1/10/2011 10:22 pm

 I gave out a question and therefore put out what info I found and wanted to see if it was correct or anyone knew different. Who knows maybe that was really the wrong answer.

Thanks grimm ill have to check into that
Always be yourself


fun4allin2006 60M
Ask me for a photo
1580 posts
1/12/2011 4:09 am

 Sigh....LIFE as we know it....wonder what fate bestows us in the next 50 or 6o alone...how about 200...wow...look at our past and the last 50...and say things wont change too much...
Thanks again
FUN


allknight2 60M
2616 posts
2/13/2011 1:27 am
I enjoy reading the last section of Webster's Handy college dictionary entitled "New Words". My copy from 1972 contains new words like android, hallucinogen, and stereo. it also has phrases like rhythm method; a method of birth control based on abstention from sexual intercourse during ovulation. This really gives us a feel for the times in which they were written.

allknight2's New Posts
Hanukkah Bling
Holiday Gift Giving Guide For People With A Penis
Christmas Bling Pt 2

KEEP THE WIND AT YOUR BACK, A SMILE ON YOUR FACE
AND KEEP ON KEEPIN' ON


lickmelightly 42F
411 posts
2/20/2011 1:48 pm

 I came across an online etmology dictionary which is basically a map of the wheel-ruts of modern English. Etymologies are not definitions; they're explanations of what our words meant and how they sounded 600 or 2,000 years ago. It is pretty cool to browse
Always be yourself


Become a member to create a blog