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1897, 236 pages Subject: English language - Old English, ca. 450-1100 Dictionaries English. Publisher: New York, London, The Macmillan company.
Generations of students of English have benefited from the changes that Sweet wrought in the understanding of the historical and contemporary forms of the language.' Oxford Dictionary of National Biography This clear, concise and authoritative dictionary is the ideal reference for the student of Old English literature and language. Henry Sweet (1845-1912) was educated at King's College School, London, the University of Heidelberg and Balliol College, Oxford. He was an active member of the Philological Society and served as its president from 1876 to 1878. He was a member of the Royal Danish Academy and a corresponding member the Munich and Royal Prussian Academies of Sciences. Despite his outstanding intellectual abilities and talent for teaching, it was only in 1901 that he was given a readership in Phonetics at Oxford University. The character of Professor Higgins in Shaw's Pygmalion was partly based upon Sweet.
E-Book Content
THE STUDENT'S DICTIONARY OF
ANGLO-SAXON SWEET
£oni»on
HENRY FROWDE Oxford University
Pr-ess
Amen Corner,
Warehouse
E.C,
(Hew "PorR
THE MACMILLAN
CO.,
66 FIFTH
AVENUE
THE
STUDENT'S DICTIONARY OF
ANGLO-SAXON BY
HENRY SWEET,
M.A., Ph.D., LL.D.
CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE MUNICH ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
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AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1897
C,rfor&
PRINTED AT THE CLARENDON PRESS BY HORACE HART
PRIKTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
74
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PREFACE This dictionary was undertaken at the request of the Delegates of the Clarendon Press, who, feeling the want of an abridgement of the large AngloSaxon dictionary (BT) still in progress, applied to me. From a variety of reasons I felt myself obliged to undertake the work. As the book was wanted as soon as possible, with a view to forestalling unauthorized abridgements, I could only under-
my
best within a limited spaCe and a limited period.
Every dictionary done ideally well and on an adequate scale, it is never finished — and an unfinished dictionary is worse than useless or, if finished, is never uniform as regards materials and treatment. A dictionary which is good from a practical point of view that is, which is finished within a reasonable time, and is kept within reasonable limits of space must necessarily fall far short of ideal requirements. In short, we may almost venture on the paradox that a good dictionary is necessarily a bad one.
take to do is
necessarily a compromise.
If
—
—
work all the existing Anglo-Saxon The old Bosworth is an uncritical were completely antiquated.
Sources. dictionaries
— When
compilation, which
of
its
first
I
first
falls far
publication.
began
hypothetical roots
makes
this
short of the scientific requirements even of the period
Ettmliller's
regards accuracy and fullness, but it
its
Lexicon Anglosaxouicum
unhappy arrangement
practically
useless
to
is
far
superior as
of the words under
the beginner.
Leo's Aiigcl-
combines the faults of both its predecessors with a recklessness inventing new forms and meanings which is without a parallel even in Anglo-
sdchsisches Glossar in
—
PREFACE
vi
Saxon lexicography. I had hardly begun to work steadily at this dictionary when