Talk:Etymological dictionary

Notes

I'm going to start bringing together some notes from which we can begin this article. Everything here has come from Google searches so far...

Definitions

• wordorigins.org: An etymological dictionary is simply one that focuses on the etymological portion of the entry. It will include more details on the origins, such as the dates when various word forms appeared in the language or extended notes on the origins. This is usually done at the sacrifice of other information. Pronunciations, plural and other forms, and even definitions are left out.
• wordnet: a dictionary giving the historical origins of each word.

History

• 100—121 CE: Shuowen Jiezi compiled by Xǔ Shèn.
• 10th century: Sanas Cormaic, "Cormac's Glossary". "This work may be the earliest etymological dictionary in a European vernacular and was heavily influenced by the work of Isidore of Seville". [1]
• 11th century: The first etymological dictionaries: "Vocabulista" by Papias, "Panormia/derivationes" by Osbern of Gloucester.
• 1721: The first etymological dictionary which explained the origin of English words by Nathan Bailey.
• 1868: Indo-European etymological dictionary by August Fick.

Caucasian languages

• East Caucasian: Leksika 1971, Khaidakov 1973
• West Caucasian: Kuipers 1975
• North Caucasian: "A COMPARATIVE DICTIONARY OF NORTH CAUCASIAN LANGUAGES": [2]

Chinese

• Shuowen Jiezi (說文解字, "Explaining Simple and Analyzing Compound Characters") is often cited as the earliest Chinese etymological dictionary. Compiled in 100-121 CE by Xǔ Shèn.

English

• Nathan Bailey: First English etym. dict., 1721.
• Professor Anatole Lieberman of the University of Minnesota "is working on the first complete etymological dictionary of the English language". (25 Oct 2001)

Indo-European

• August Fick compiled the first comparative etymological dictionary of Indo-European languages in 1868.

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Altaic

Altaic hypothesis is widely discredited these days, should some of the links there be grouped into a disputed section? The first link there even has Nostratic, which has an even worse reputation than Altaic. --chinneeb-talk 11:16, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

Referencing aims

{{Unreferenced}} seems like overkill when the first section basically is a list of references. Do we want references that assert some kind of additional notability for etymological dictionaries to be mentioned, or are we operating here with the understanding that any scholarly etymological dictionary is worth mentioning? --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 13:18, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

I contributed to the list assuming the latter. E.g. it would be quite difficult to prove notability of dictionaries that are still unfinished though obviously valuable projects. But even the classics in the languages I'm interested in seem to be simply known as classics by default, without having to reference any specific reviews or articles that would assert their importance. The importance of dictionaries is best deduced from practical usage - do you see them recommended and referenced by scholars frequently, basically. So I think it's better to stick to the latter principle you mention. Admittedly, if each language had fifty dictionaries on the list, I would agree we would have to become more selective, but in practice there's not that many etym. dictionaries to list in the first place. — Phazd (talk) 16:46, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

Sounds good. I will keep expanding the initial list, quite a lot is still missing. At some point we might consider splitting it by language family, but probably this is not yet a major concern.

I am less sure which part of the list "subgroup-wide" dictionaries like Leslau's dict. of Gurage should be on. Listing them for every individual language seems like a poor idea, but the language family section seems to be focused on dictionaries focusing on the overall reconstruction of a language family.--Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 16:55, 13 March 2024 (UTC)