英语语言词典

在每个家庭中，词典作为在《圣经》旁边随处可见的参考书，如同廉价的《圣经》本身一样，是现代的产物。这并不是说词典本身是一种新奇现象。希腊化时期的希腊有各种各样的词典。早在公元前150年，中国人已有了一部非常广博的著作《说文解字》。在公元10世纪的Fiah al-lugha（词典编纂学）阐述中，穆斯林已拥有了高度发达的词典编纂学。在13世纪初，英语语法家加兰的约翰就制作了单词的分类列表，并称其为《词典》，是已知的对该词的首次使用。

17^th Century.  In 1604, Robert Cawdrey published his A Table Alphabeticall of “hard usuall English words” for the “benefit and helpe of Ladies. Gentlewomen, or any other unskilfull persons,” and thereby gained the credit of initiating the modern period of English dictionaries. Cawdrey gave brief definitions of about 2500 words like “commotrix,” “concinnate,” and “glacitate.” The “hard words” pattern persisted for about a century after Cawdrey’s pioneering work and includes Henry Cockeram’s The English Dictionarie (1623), the first to be called a “dictionary,” and the New World of Words (1658) by Edward Phillips, nephew of the poet John Milton.

17世纪。1604年，罗伯特·考德里为“造福和帮助女士。贵妇，或其他不熟练的人们”出版了他的“英语难词”《字母表》，从而获得了开创现代英语词典时代的声望。考德里为大约2500个单词赋予了简短的定义，例如“commotrix,” “concinnate,” and “glacitate.”这样的单词。在考德里的开创性工作之后“难词”模式持续了大约一个世纪，包括亨利·科克拉姆的第一个被称为“词典”的《英语词典》（1623年），以及诗人约翰·弥尔顿的侄子爱德华·菲利普斯的《词汇的新世界》（1658年）。

18^th Century.  The first wordbook to break with the hard-words tradition was A New English Dictionary (1702), signed by a certain “J. K.” (perhaps John Kersey). Whether or not he was J. K., John Kersey in his own name truly inaugurated the modern tradition by bringing out the first dictionary of considerable scope (38,000 entries), with a clear and consistent defining style, in his 1706 revision of Phillips’s New World of Words. Two years later, Kersey published the Dictionarium Anglo-Britannicum, a small, cheap dictionary that is the direct ancestor of the modern “desk” or “college” dictionary.

18世纪。第一本与难词的传统决裂的词汇书是《新英语词典》，署名是某个“J. K”（也许是约翰·克西）。无论他是不是J. K.，约翰·克西完全以他自己的名字通过出版第一部范围相当广泛的词典（38000个条目），在1706年对菲利普斯《词汇的新世界》的修订中用清新而一致的定义风格开创了现代传统。两年后，克西出版了《英英词典》，一部小型、便宜的词典，是现代“办公桌”或“学院”词典的直接祖先。

Had he not been eclipsed by Samuel Johnson, the laborious and systematic Nathan Bailey would surely be considered the greatest lexicographer of the 18^th century. Bailey made THREE dictionaries of increasing scope and mastery, published between 1721 and 1736. He was the first to perfect a methodology of word collect and compilation, to feature etymologies, and to mark the stress and syllabification of the entry words.

如果塞缪尔·约翰逊没有使内森·贝利黯然失色的话，那么辛苦而有条理的他就一定会被认为是18世纪最伟大的词典编纂者。贝利在1721年至1736年间编辑出版了三部范围愈发广泛，掌控能力愈发通达的词典。他是完善单词收集和编纂方法，以词源为特色，并标注词条词汇重音和划分音节的第一人。

Between the work of Bailey and that of Johnson there need be mentioned only Thomas Dyche’s A New General English Dictionary (1735), which introduced the practice of showing pronunciation and included a brief grammar of English; and Benjamin Martin’s Lingua Britannica Reformata (1749), which was a model of analytical defining, with the various senses of each word separated and numbered.

在贝利和约翰逊的作品之间只需提一下托马斯·戴奇的《新通用英语词典》（1735年），词典引入了显示发音的练习，还包括简单的英语语法；而本杰明·马丁的《大布列颠语言改革》（1749年），是分析定义的范例，对每个单词的不同含义进行了区分和编号。

Johnson’s Dictionary.  In 1747, Samuel Johnson contracted with a group of London booksellers to produce A Dictionary of the English Language; the fee was £1,575. In 1755, after eight years of towering and morose effort, the book was published in two folio volumes; it was over 2,300 pages long and defined about 50,000 words.

约翰逊词典。1747年，塞缪尔·约翰逊与一群伦敦书商签订了编写《英语语言词典》的合同，费用是1575英镑。1755年，在八年峥嵘而郁闷的努力之后，该书以两卷对开本的形式出版；它超过了2300页，定义了大约50000个单词。

Johnson’s dictionary had only one technical innovation, the printing of quotations containing the word being defined, and even this had already been by several European dictionaries, and suggested earlier by Joseph Addison and others.

约翰逊词典只有一项技术创新，印刷包含被定义单词的引文，甚至这点已被几本欧洲词典做过，而且早前由约瑟夫·艾迪生和其他人已建议过。

The 20^th century remembers Johnson’s Dictionary only for a few definitions that reflect his prejudices (oats, pension, whig) or his ponderousness (“network: Any thing reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections”), or for the reply he made when a lady asked him why he had defined pastern as “The Knee of a horse”: “Ignorance, Madam, pure ignorance.” These lapses do not represent the general quality of the book, however, and its Preface is the finest thing ever written in English on lexicography.

20世纪记得约翰逊词典的只有几个反映他偏见（oats, pension, whig）的定义，或他的呆板（网络：在相等的距离上，任何与交差点之间的间隙形成网状或交叉的东西），当一位妇女问他，为什么他将脚踝定义为“马的膝盖”时，他的回答是：“是无知，女士，纯属无知”。然而，这些小失误并不代表该书的整体质量，而该书的序言曾经是用英语书写的关于词典编纂最好的东西。

The Pronouncing Dictionaries.  The next stage of British lexicography deals with pronunciation, or “orthoepy,” as it was then called. Many specialized pronouncing dictionaries were brought out. William Kenrick, in 1773, was the first to divide the words into syllables and indicate phonetic quality with diacritical marks. Thomas Sheridan’s aim in his 1780 dictionary was “to establish a Standard of Pronunciation,” although Johnson quarreled with his right to, Sheridan having “the disadvantage of being an Irishman.”

发音词典。英国词典编纂的下一个阶段涉及发音，当时称为“正音学”。出版了许多专门的发音词典。1773年，威廉·肯里克首次将单词分成音节，并用变音符表示音质。托马斯·谢里丹在1780年的词典中的目的是“建立发音的标准”，尽管约翰逊为其权利而争吵，但谢里丹有“作为爱尔兰人的不利条件”。

19^th century.  For most Americans, “Noah Webster” means “dictionary.” Webster, a Connecticut Yankee, saw that in the early 1800’s Johnson’s dictionary was seriously out of date, especially in the burgeoning fields of science, technology, and political economy, and judged that the United States would develop its own form of English. He was also well in advance of Johnson, and more akin to modern dictionary makers, in his conviction that it “is our business to find out what the English language is, and not, how it might have been made.”

19世纪。对于大多数美国人来说，“诺亚·韦伯斯特”就意味着“词典”。韦伯斯特，一位康涅狄格州的美国佬，注意到19世纪早期的约翰逊词典已严重过时，尤其是在新兴的科学、技术以及政治经济学领域，并判断美国会发展它自己的英语形式。他也远胜于约翰逊，而且更接近现代词典的编纂者，他坚信“我们的责任是发现英语语言是什么，而不是，它是如何形成的”。

Webster’s dictionary. Webster set to work in 1807 on the great American Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1823. Webster’s dictionary defined about 75,000 terms in 1,936 pages. He managed the 2d edition (1840) and did some work, before his death in 1843, on the 3d (1847), which was first published by the firm of G. and C. Merriam.

韦伯斯特词典。韦伯斯特在1807年开始着手编纂伟大的，于1823年出版的《美国英语语言词典》。韦伯斯特词典在1936页中定义了大约75000个术语。他完成了第二版（1840年），并在他于1843年去世前对第三版（1847的）做了一些工作，词典首次由G. 和 C. 梅里亚姆公司出版。

The 5^th edition (1846), called “the Unabridged,” represents the definitive break with Webster’s own work. The etymologies and the history of English brought this book abreast of linguistic science. Successors in this excellent tradition are the New International (1909), the New International, Second Edition (1934), and Webster’s Third New International (1961).

那个被称为“未经删节的”第五版，代表了与韦伯斯特自己作品的决定性转折。英语的词源与历史使该书与语言学并驾齐驱。这一优良传统的继承者是《新国际英语词典》（1909年），《新国际英语词典》第二版（1934年），和《韦伯斯特第三版新国际英语词典》（1961年）。

Joseph Worcester.  Although his reputation has been eclipsed by Webster’s, Joseph Worcester prepared dictionaries that were in no respect inferior to Webster’s. Worcester’s best achievement was his dictionary of 1860, which culminated more than 30 years of lexicography and was superior to the 4^th edition of Webster’s (1859). Worcester’s dictionary was the first to include illustrations and synonyms in the text, and the first to be made by a fairly large staff of editors and a corps of expert consultants.

约瑟夫·伍斯特。虽然他的声望因韦伯斯特的声望而黯然失色，但约瑟夫·伍斯特编纂的词典在任何方面都不逊色于韦伯斯特词典。约瑟夫·伍斯特最好的成就是他1860年的词典，它是30多年来词典编纂的顶点，而且要优于第四版的韦伯斯特词典（1859年）。伍斯特的词典首次在文本中包括了插图和同义词，并首次由相当多的编辑人员和一支专家顾问团队完成。

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Not until 1857, when Richard Chenevix Trench read a paper “On Some Deficiencies in Our English Dictionaries” before the Philological Society, was the next and immortal work of British lexicography launched. Partly stimulated by Charles Richardson’s curious New Dictionary of the English Language (1835—1837), which was in effect a violent attack on Johnson’s dictionary, Trench proposed what became A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (NED), called since 1894 the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).

牛津英语词典（OED）。一直到1857年，当理查德·切尼维克斯·特伦奇在语言学会面前读了一篇 “论我们英语词典中的一些不足”的论文时，才启动了英国词典编纂的下一个且不朽的作品。部分是受到查尔斯·理查森不寻常的《新英语语言词典》（1835年--1837年）的激发，这实际上是对约翰逊词典的猛烈攻击，特伦奇提出名为《以历史原则编订的新英语词典》，自1894年以来被称为《牛津英语词典》（OED）。

The OED is in 12 volumes totaling 15,487 pages. The first volume was published in 1884 and the 12^th in 1928, with a supplement in 1933. The work is based on about 5 million citation slips, of which about 2 million citations are printed in the text. It defines and shows the complete history of some 250,000 English words (in a total entry list of about 414,000), strictly from evidence of actual use. The OED is the prime monument of English lexicography, and stimulated a number of similar works.

《牛津英语词典》共12卷，15487页。1884年出版了第一卷，第十二卷于1928年出版，1933年进行了增补。该作品是基于大约500万个引文卡片，其中在文本中印刷了大约200万个引文。它严格依据实际的使用证据，定义和显示了约25万个英语单词（在总数大约为41.4万个词条列表中）的完整历史。《牛津英语词典》是英语词典编纂的主要丰碑，并激发了许多相同的作品。

Other 19^th Century Dictionaries.  The colossal and masterly OED dominates the 19^th century, but John Ogilvie’s Imperial Dictionary (1851) was a workmanlike job, and James Stormonth’s The Etymological and Pronouncing Dictionary (1871) was entirely admirable, the equal in many respects of the American dictionaries of the tradition of Webster and Worcester. Stormonth was the first to respell the words to indicate pronunciation, rather than merely marking the printed entry word as his predecessors had done.

19世纪的其它词典。虽然庞大而精湛的《牛津英语词典》统治了19世纪，但约翰·奥格尔维的《御用词典》（1851年）是一项精工细作的作品，而詹姆斯·斯托蒙思的《词源与发音词典》（1871年）很是令人钦佩，在许多方面与韦伯斯特和伍斯特传统的美国词典不相上下。斯托蒙思是第一个用拼写单词来表示发音的人，而不像他的前任那样仅仅是对打印的词条单词进行标注。

In this period the term “encyclopedic” began to be used for certain dictionaries, indicating that they “explain not only words but things, … give an explanation of the things to which such words are applied.” Charles Annandale’s 1882 revision of Ogilvie’s dictionary was the first to be called “encyclopedic,” and the best British exemplar of the type was John Hunter’s 14-volume The Encyclopedic Dictionary (also called Cassell’s; 1879—1888). Hunter’s work was inspired not by the OED, which proclaimed itself non-encyclopedic, but by Pierre Larousse’s Grand dictionnaire universel (1866—1876).

在这一时期，“百科全书”一词开始用于某些词典，表明它们“不仅解释单词，而且也解释事物 …, 对这些单词适用的事物进行解释”。查尔斯·安南戴尔1882年版的奥格尔维词典首次被称为“百科全书式”的词典，而这种类型最佳的英国范例是约翰·亨特的14卷《百科全书词典》（也被称为《卡斯尔词典》；1879年—1888年）。亨特的作品并未受到《牛津英语词典》的启发，宣称它本身不是百科全书式词典，而是皮埃尔·拉鲁斯的《19世纪通用大词典》（1866年—1876年）。

The concept of the encyclopedic dictionary is important because it continued to be a debated point in lexicographical theory and because it became the hallmark of the American unabridged books, as opposed to the typical British dictionaries. The greatest American encyclopedic dictionary is the Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia (1889—1899), which defines about 200,000 terms and identifies 250,000 biographical and geographical names.

百科全书式词典的概念很重要，因为它一直是词典编纂理论的一个争论点，因为它已成为了美国未缀删节版书籍的标志，而不是典型的英国词典。最好的美国百科全书式词典是《世纪百科词典》（1889年—1899年），词典定义了大约20万个术语，确定了25万个人名和地名。

In 1894 the Funk and Wagnalls Company published its Standard Dictionary under the editorship of Isaac K. Funk, president of the company. The book introduced four policies, all based on the declared purpose of immediate helpfulness, that have been very generally adopted in American dictionaries: (1) arrangement of definitions in the order of current frequency rather than the order of historical occurrence; (2) placement of the etymologies at the end rather than the beginning of definitions; (3) use of one alphabetical listing for all entries, instead of separate sections for biography and the like; and (4) use of lowercase instead of capital letters at the beginning of all words except proper nouns. The Standard was revised and enlarged in 1903 and entirely reedited as the New Standard in 1913.

1894年，芬克和瓦格纳尔公司由公司总裁艾萨克·芬克的编辑指导，出版了它的《标准词典》。该书引入了四种策略，都是基于宣称的在美国词典中被广泛采用的即时提供帮助的目的：（1）按当前出现的频率，而不是以历史上出现的顺序来安排定义；（2）将词源的位置放在末尾，而不是在定义的开始；（3）所有条目都使用一个字母列表，以取代如传记之类的单独列表；（4）除专有名词外，在所有单词的开头使用小写字母取代大写字母。该标准在1903年进行了增订，并于1913年完全重新编辑为新标准。

Funk was especially interested in spelling reform and accurate phonetic representation. The New Standard used two separate alphabets for showing pronunciation, one with a simple diacritical system, the “textbook key,” and the other a relatively advanced “Revised Scientific Alphabet.”

芬克特别感兴趣的是拼写改革和准确音标的呈现。新标准使用了两种不同的字母来表示发音，一个是简单的变音符系统，“教科书的关键”，另一个是相对先进的“已修订的科学字母表”。

20^th Century.  In the early 1900’s, as the OED neared completion, the Oxford University Press commissioned a condensed dictionary based on the OED but having better commercial possibilities. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English (1911) went into its 5^th edition in 1964 and has been the standard desk dictionary for British users. It apparently stimulated the compilation of Henry Cecil Wyld’s Universal Dictionary of the English Language (1932).

20世纪。在20世纪初，随着《牛津英语词典》接近完成，牛津大学出版社受委托以《牛津英语词典》为基础，但要具有更好的商业可能性的浓缩词典。《简明牛津现代英语词典》（1911年）到1964年已出版了它的第五版，并一直是英国使用者的标准书桌词典。这显然刺激了亨利·塞西尔·怀尔德的《通用英语语言词典》的编纂（1932）。

The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (1932; is an abridgment of the OED, defines about 195,000 terms.) It has been the chief British dictionary in the “semi-unabridged” category, midway in size between the unabridged (450,000—650,000 entries) and the desk, or college, type.

《简编牛津英语词典》（1932年；是《牛津英语词典》的删节版，定义了大约19.5万个术语）。它一直是主要的 “半-未经删节”类的英国词典，大小介于未删节的（45万—65万个条目）和书桌，或大学、典型类词典之间。

The “historical principles” of the OED, and a great many of its citation slips, have since been used for several specialized scholarly dictionaries. Sir William Craigie (1867—1957), editor of the OED from 1901—1933, provided continuity between the OED and its offspring by editing the 4-volume A Dictionary of American English (DAE; 1938—1944) and initiating The Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue (1931--). The smaller Dictionary of Americanisms (DA; 1951) restricted itself to terms originating in the United State.

《牛津英语词典》的“历史原则”，以及它的大量引文卡片已被用于一些专门的学术词典。威廉·克雷吉爵士（1867年—1957年），1901年—1933年担任《牛津英语词典》的编辑，通过编辑四卷本《美国英语词典》（DAE；1938年—1944年）为《牛津英语词典》及其后代提供了连续性，并开创了《古苏格语词典》（1931年--）。小型《美语词典》（DA；1951年）将词典本身限定在起源于美国的那些术语。

Besides these “second-generation” OED books, a handful of other specialized dictionaries deserve mention. Joseph Wright’s English Dialect Dictionary, 6 volumes (1898—1905), is invaluable in its field. Walter W. Skeat’s Etymological Dictionary of the English Language (1881; revised 1909) was unmatched until the appearance of Eric Partridge’s Origins (1958), followed rather soon, as these matters go, by C. T. Onions’ The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology (1966) and Ernst Klein’s superb 2-volume Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language (1966—1967).

除了这些“第二代”《牛津英语词典》的书籍外，一些其它专业词典也值得一提。约瑟夫·赖特的《英语方言词典》，六卷本（1898年—1905年）在其领域是无价之宝。沃尔特·K. 斯基特的《英语语言词源词典》（1881年；1909年修订）直到艾里克·帕特里奇的《起源》（1958年）的出现都是无与伦比的，随着事情的发展，很快紧随的是由C. T. 奥尼恩斯编辑的《牛津英语词源词典》（1966年）和恩斯特·克莱因极佳的两卷本《英语语言综合词源词典》（1966年—1967年）。

American Semi-unabridged Dictionaries.  In the intermediate size, 180,000 to 250,000 entries, notable dictionaries are the Funk and Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of the English Language, International Edition (1958 with revision), Clarence Barnhart’s excellent World Book Encyclopedia Dictionary (1963), and the Random House Dictionary (1966).

美国半未经删节词典。在中等规模中，18万至25万个条目，著名的词典是芬克和瓦格纳尔《英语语言标准词典》，国际版（1958年修订），克拉伦斯·巴恩哈特卓越的《世界图书百科全书词典》（1963年），以及《兰登书屋词典》（1966年）。

American Desk or college Dictionaries.  One of the most impressive developments in lexicography has been the lavish scale on which American publishers produce the smaller dictionaries of widest use. These include not only desk, or college, dictionaries but also elementary and secondary school dictionaries, usually published in graded series.

美国书桌或大学词典。词典编纂中最令人印象深刻的发展之一是美国出版商大规模出版的最广泛使用的小型词典。这些词典不仅包括书桌，或大学，各类词典，还包括小学和中学词典，通常按年级系列出版。

Clarence Barnhart’s American College Dictionary (1947) was historically the first monument of this development. Webster’s New World Dictionary (1953), edited by Joseph Friend and David Guralnik and distinguished by the etymological work of Harold Whitehall, was the next important book. A legal decision finally established the unprotected status of the word “Webster’ for dictionaries entirely unconnected with the legal successors of Noah Webster.

克拉伦斯·巴恩哈特的《美国大学词典》（1947年）在历史上是这一发展的第一座纪念碑。《韦伯斯特新世界词典》（1953年），由约瑟夫·弗兰德和大卫·古拉尔尼克编辑，以哈罗德·怀特霍尔的词源著作为特征，是又一部重要的书籍。一项法律判决确立了“韦伯斯特”一词不受保护的地位，因为词典与诺亚·韦伯斯特的法定继承人完全无关。

Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (1983) continued the Merriam-Webster series, and the Funk and Wagnalls Standard College Dictionary (1963) had major revisions in 1966 and 1968. The college edition of the Random House Dictionary appeared in 1968, and the American Heritage Dictionary was published in 1969.

《韦伯斯特第九版新大学词典》（1983年）延续了梅里安姆-韦伯斯特系列，而芬克和瓦格纳尔《标准大学词典》（1963年）已在1966年和1968年进行了重大修改。《兰登书屋词典》的大学版出现在1968年，而《美国传统词典》于1969年出版。

待续：NON-ENGLISH-LANGUAGE DICTIONARIES（非英语语言词典）

                                                                                             2024年1月21日译

（译者注：该部分词条位列《大美百科全书》1985年版，第9卷，第86页至88页）