The Refined Reader (13) The History of the Dictionary

The Refined Reader aims to take a look at the journey to where we are as readers today.  It's part history, part commentary - providing a brief, conversational summary of various aspects of our bookish past and comparing it to how it has affected us in modern times.  I love history, but I am no historian, and while I plan to do my research, if there are any errors, please let me know!  This is as much a learning venture for me as I hope it is for my blog visitors!

The term "dictionary" was first coined in 1220 by John of Garland who wrote a book on Latin diction he called Dictionarius.  But the dictionary - a collection of word definitions - was around way before then.  Cuneiform tablets with Sumerian-Akkadian word lists date from around 2300 B.C. while a Chinese dictionary dates from the 3rd century B.C. and an Arabic dictionary was compiled in the 8th century A.D.  Language dictionaries were around in Medieval times for Latin and Greek translations.  Early dictionaries were often ordered by topic, by rhyme (the sound of the last syllable) or by the root word.

The dictionary was sometimes ordered alphabetically by first letter as well, the now predominant method, and Samuel Johnson's dictionary used that method to organize the words, as well as used textual references to create the first 'modern' dictionary in 1755.  This dictionary encompassed the English language as it was used, and not just the difficult, rare words that almost exclusively made up the content of the dictionaries that came before it.  Even though Johnson's dictionary was not always accurate and unbiased (and there were sometimes humorous definitions included in the text), his work set up the methodology that all dictionaries after would emulate.

And some fun Dictionary facts from Express.co.uk:

• Johnson's Dictionary took him 9 years to complete, the encyclopedic Oxford English Dictionary (OED) took 70 years.
• The word with the most definitions in the OED is 'run'
• "Robert Cawdrey’s Table Alphabeticall of 1604, which is often seen as the first English dictionary, had no words beginning with J, K, U, W, X or Y ...but J and I were seen as the same letter at that time, as were U and V, so only K, W, X and Y words were really absent."

Does anyone use a physical dictionary any more to look up words? 

Sources:
Wikipedia / Wikipedia