Some Additional Sources for Early English Dictionaries

Abstract

Several years ago I set out to describe a number of sources for English dictionaries of the first half of the seventeenth century and how the early dictionary makers employed those sources.1 I wish to suggest here some previously unidentified sources and offer a word or two more on the methods of the early English lexicographers. The dictionaries I am concerned with are Robert Cawdrey's Table Alphabeteicall (1604), John Bullokar's English Expositor (1616), and Henry Cockeram's English Dictionarie (1623).2 William Fulke is today remembered as a vigorous controversialist on the puritan side of religious issues. However, one book, printed early in his career, was devoted to a different sort of heavenly/earthly concern: an explanation of comets, earthquakes, thunder, winds, and the like. A goodly Gallery with a most pleasaunt Prospect, into the garden of naturall contemplation, to beholde the nature of all causes of all kind of Meteors was first printed in 1563 and went through two subsequent editions by 1602.3 Some early dictionary makers turned to it for several of the words they employed. The examples are few but are rather striking.