"Dictionaries and lexicography (the art and craft of dictionary-making) have existed as long as humans have been writing. When one considers that the first dictionaries were carved into clay tablets by Sumerians over 4000 years ago, then the first...
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"Dictionaries and lexicography (the art and craft of dictionary-making) have existed as long as humans have been writing. When one considers that the first dictionaries were carved into clay tablets by Sumerians over 4000 years ago, then the first monolingual English dictionary, which appeared in 1604, could be considered positively 'recent'. However, the four centuries since then present a fascinating story of evolution, innovation, devotion, plagiarism, and controversy. Dictionaries are the kinds of books that are always 'just there'. Alongside religious texts they have acquired, throughout history, a sense of sacredness and authority. There are reasons for this, and this volume traces how this became so. How did a single genre of text have the power to standardize the English language across time and region, to rival the Bible in notions of authority, and to challenge our understanding of objectivity, prescription, and description?"--
