Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1996. Vol. 1. Eger Journal of English Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 24)
Geoff Barnbrook: From description to prescription and back again
Lowr and frown; Lower than before; Lour , a French Palace. Lot in Sodom\ Loth and unwilling; Loath and abhor. Louse bites, Loose and unty; Lose nothing. Lice and Fleas; Lies are often reported. Liturgy , or Common-prayer: Lethargy sleeping. Line for a Jack: A Loyn of Veal. League of Peace: Leg of the body. Lattice of a window: The Maid Lettice fetcht some Lettuce (Cocker, 1696, p. 103) In most of the examples from both Browne and Cocker the setting of the words in some form of typical context establishes the method of treatment of them as 'use' rather than 'mention', so that the knowledge being presented relates to the word as 'activity', not only as 'entity'. In some cases given above (e.g. 'Pear', 'Plod', 'Prey', 'Quean' and 'Rough' from Browne, 'Lour' and 'Liturgy' from Cocker) brief definitions or equivalents are given, so that 'use' and 'mention', 'entity' and 'activity' are mixed. One other important element is exhibited by the set of examples from Browne, two of which, 'Plot' and 'Pray', act partly as moral exhortations rather than neutral linguistic statements. The inclusion of this moral element is an explicit feature of many of the later dictionaries, most notably and self-consciously Johnson's. 3 English Dictionaries before Johnson Histories of monolingual English dictionaries normally begin towards the end of the 16th century, and Cawdrey's A table alphabetical /, produced in 1604, is usually cited as the first fully recognisable specimen. This work is dealt with in detail in the next section. Glosses and bilingual dictionaries certainly existed before that date, together with spelling books and language manuals which contain some of the information normally associated with monolingual dictionaries. As an example, Edmund Coote's The English Schoole-maister contains a twenty page vocabulary list in alphabetical order, in which most of the words are given a brief gloss. He describes this as: 11
