For anyone interested here’s a very abbreviated rough list of the first ever dictionaries, summarised from Wikipedia:
First Sumerian-Akkadian word list is dated around 2300 BCE.
The first surviving monolingual dictionary is Chinese and from 3rd century BCE.
First Arabic dictionary was from 8th century.
The oldest surviving Japanese dictionary is from 835.
The word dictionary was invented by an Englishmen in 1220. There are English-Latin, English- French and English-Spanish bilingual dictionaries from this time.
First Latin dictionary was published in 1440.
The first alphabetical English dictionary was published in 1604.
A Spanish, Italian and French dictionary were published ~1611.
The first American dictionary was completed in 1825.
I would have thought there would be dictionary of hieroglyphics before any of them, but if there was it hasn’t survived.
Bilingual word lists seem to have been first. I guess it depends on how you define what a dictionary is. The very earliest English one wasn’t even in alphabetical order, which seems pretty important for a dictionary imo!
Oh man looking a word up in that must’ve been frustrating. Like a definition book with a list of words just in the order the author thought of them… Hilarious.
For anyone interested here’s a very abbreviated rough list of the first ever dictionaries, summarised from Wikipedia:
I would have thought there would be dictionary of hieroglyphics before any of them, but if there was it hasn’t survived.
So wait is the original meaning of dictionary more like “a way to translate from one language to another?”
Bilingual word lists seem to have been first. I guess it depends on how you define what a dictionary is. The very earliest English one wasn’t even in alphabetical order, which seems pretty important for a dictionary imo!
Oh man looking a word up in that must’ve been frustrating. Like a definition book with a list of words just in the order the author thought of them… Hilarious.