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

a true Table conteining and teaching the true writing and understanding of any hard english word, borrowed from the Greeke, Latine, or French, and how to know the one from the other, with the interpretation thereof by a plaine English word (Coote, 1596, introductory note 12) This extract shows its main features: Garboile hurly burly garner, cornc chamber gem precious stone gentilitie

) generositie) gcntrie gentile a heathen generation offspring gender genealogie g.generation genitor father gesture gives fetters ginger gourd /rplant (Coote, 1596, p.84) A detailed key to the conventions adopted is given in his introduction to the table: Roman letters are used for 'words taken from the Latine or other learned languages', italics for those from French, and 'those with the English letter, are meerly English, or from some other vulgar tongue.' The 'English letter' or black letter is shown above as bold type. Further annotations are 'g.' for Greek and 'k' for 'a kind of (Coote, 1596, pp.73-75) The alphabetic arrangement of Cawdrey's work is lacking in most of the other earlier works, but the concept of a list of words arranged with their equivalents is established very early. The most important feature of Cawdrey's book is that it is purely a list of words and

1 definitions and specifically monolingual. However, like its ancestors